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COPliRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR 
TIME-AND AFTER 



ARTHUR D. DEAN, ScD. 

PROFESSOR OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION, TEACHERS COLLEGE 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, AND SUPERVISING OFFICER 

BUREAU OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING, NEW YORK 

STATE MILITARY TRAINING COMMISSION 



GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO 



COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY ARTHUR D. DEAN 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



518.1 






ma -4 1918 



gfte gtftenattm greX 

GINN AND COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS ■ BOSTON • U.S.A. 



©CI.A481906 



FOREWORD 

It is not an army that we must shape and train for war ; 
it is a nation. . . , The whole nation must be a team in which 
each man shall play the part for which he is best fitted. . . . 
Each man shall be classified for service in the place to 
which it shall best serve the general good to call him. . . . 
The significance of this cannot be overstated. It is a new 
thing in our history and a landmark in our progress. It is 
a new manner of accepting and vitalizing our duty to give 
ourselves with thoughtful devotion to the common purpose of 
us all. — WooDROw Wilson, Proclamation^ May l8, igiy 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Bringing the War into the Schools .... i 

II. War and Community Uses of our Schools . . 17 

III. The Field for Industrial and Trade Schools . 53 

IV. Our Colleges and Technical Institutes ... 80 

V. The Opportunity for Manual and Household 

Arts 115 

VI. The Work Impulses of Youth 135 

VII. Organized Boy Power vs. Military Drill . . 165 

VIII. Red Cross and Other Community Work . . . 192 

IX. Reeducation of the Disabled 211 

X. Farm Cadets 234 

XI. The Organization of a Cadet Camp . . . . 272 

XII. A Summarized Program of Action 304 

INDEX 331 



OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME — 
AND AFTER 



OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME- 
AND AFTER 

CHAPTER I 
BRINGING THE WAR INTO THE SCHOOLS 

The summer of 191 7 found America realizing 
that the war which it had entered was not going to 
be won by the mobiHzation of an army and a navy, 
however strong and efficient they might be. In the 
proclamation of Woodrow Wilson the whole nation 
was called upon to mobilize with a clear, succinct 
purpose of organizing those forces of industry, of 
education, of woman power, which are back of every 
successful struggle of a nation in peace or in war. 
The ready acceptance of the slogan "Win the War 
in the Air," with the public clamor for aviation, was 
but an indication of the general awakening of the 
public to the truth that the war must be won by 
the use of forces as yet undeveloped, or undirected 
towards national ends. 

The mobilization which teaches the saving of 
our national resources, which directs the thoughtful 
distribution and wise use of our products, which 



2 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

cultivates the patriotic spirit of service in the boy 
and girl power of the nation, properly belongs to 
the field of education, not only in war but in peace. 
To the schools of America, therefore, the war has 
come as an opportunity for developing a closer re- 
lation between education and life, between life and 
service. 

Our gradual entrance into the war and our dis- 
tance from the conflict have given us the chance 
of pausing and surveying the situation before act- 
ing, — advantages which were unfortunately denied 
England and France. At the beginning of the war 
England apparently almost wrecked her schools, 
and is slowly repairing the mistakes of hurried 
action in suspending the attendance laws. France 
is saving her schools that the nation may go on 
after the war. It remains for America to use the 
war to make better schools. 

The mobilization of our schools is not concerned 
with the introduction of military drill, whether vol- 
untary or compulsory. It is an experiment in work- 
ing out the relation of education to war. We are, 
all of us, empirics in this experiment ; there is no 
body of tradition and theory to help us. The an- 
cient world offers us no parallels; the modern Ger- 
man system throws no light on it. America, equally 
with the nations of the older world, is a pioneer in 



BRINGING THE WAR INTO SCHOOLS 3 

the field. This is a novel experience for us who 
have been originators only of free education in the 
past or of administrative systems, not of types of 
new education. Largely what we have to guide us 
is some experience of France and England in what 
to avoid. This negative counsel is valuable in re- 
stricting our experiments, but is scarcely construc- 
tive in its nature. One of its most valuable lessons, 
however, is to show us that we must not take our 
schools into the war, as England did, but bring the 
war into the schools. 

The fact that the problem is a novel one and 
that it is experimental does not make it futile. All 
education is experimental in adapting the individual 
to his changing environment. 

During recent years our schools have had to 
consider the outside forces of the changing world. 
It was in 1881 that the first manual-training high 
school opened its doors under the hostile gaze of 
incredulity and disapproval. Since then our edu- 
cational system has been bombarded with essays 
on the relation of education to life, on practical 
aspects of education, on vocational guidance, on 
trade schools, etc. We have only to look at the 
vastly differentiated courses of our colleges (some 
of which have lost all trace of the humanities), at 
the variegated courses in our high schools, at our 



4 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

remodeled elementary courses, to realize that in 
thirty years the whole attitude of the people towards 
our schools has undergone a vast change. These 
changes were regarded as revolutionary at first. 
But it is no more revolutionary to introduce the 
war into our schools than it was to introduce the 
laboratory study of sciences, or agricultural studies, 
or courses in millinery and home-making, — that 
is, if we understand the meaning of war into the 
schools. 

It is not to be denied that the educational em- 
phasis is different. The student who takes an agri- 
cultural course, and thus prepares himself to be a 
modern efficient farmer, is only indirectly doing 
work of service to the State. His aim is individual 
improvement, an advance which results in gen- 
eral benefit to the State; whereas a girl who does 
Red Cross work in school, or a boy who works in 
a war garden, benefits the individual through the 
larger service of collective responsibility in serving 
the nation directly. 

We are not unmindful of the fact that war is a 
temporary condition, and we must not crowd out 
the fundamental studies to meet the needs of a 
temporary environment, however urgent the need 
may be. In carrying the war into our schools we 
must emphasize those permanent elements which 



BRINGING THE WAR INTO SCHOOLS 5 

are as necessary in war as in peace; we must use 
the war as an opportunity to develop service to the 
State, — service which may be vitaHzing and enno- 
bhng, full of purposeful appreciation of collective 
responsibility. 

In our study of the introduction of the war into 
our schools we may properly shut out discussions 
of elements which have no educational value. Many 
of the proposals for the war uses of our schools 
have been of a haphazard nature, called out by a 
well-meant desire to meet the emergency. Much 
of the legislation concerning itself with the employ- 
ment of school children or of those under compul- 
sory school age has been, and may yet be, harmful. 
The suggestion of using the schools as recruiting 
stations has lost value with the operation of the 
selective draft. Ill-considered proposals to turn 
over the vocational and manual-training depart- 
ments to the government for the purpose of making 
munitions have shown a lack of knowledge of their 
meager equipment for an industry highly special- 
ized with standard jigs and fixtures. A department 
store, a clothing factory, a library, or an ofifice 
building would be about as fit for such a purpose 
as a school building. The same may be said of the 
use of our schools as hospitals. Our schools must 
be retained as educative plants, — training munition 



6 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

workers, if we will, but not making munitions ; pro- 
viding the government with skilled artisans and 
scientists, but by no means converting their func- 
tion of education into that of industrial production. 

The war work of our schools is more easily 
planned in those which have technical and voca- 
tional departments than in those which contain 
only the desk and office equipment. Distinctions 
must be made, too, between schools in agricultural 
and industrial centers. The experiments made in 
New York with "farm cadets" show that the coun^ 
try boy has certain advantages over the city boy 
in all forms of rural and garden employment. 
We must not expect the same kind of work from 
the high-school boys and girls in New York City 
that we may exact from country children of the 
same age. 

The city boy may be needed in emergency office 
and factory work. Instead of contributing service 
as a farm cadet, he may become a " cooperator," 
giving part-time service to industry and to com- 
merce and part time to school, as many of our 
city boys are now doing. 

In dealing with the institution of higher grade 
we find as many distinctions in service. In the 
college of the cultural type — the college of indi- 
vidualism — it is the individual who serves the 



BRINGING THE WAR INTO SCHOOLS 7 

State, how nobly may be seen in the English uni- 
versities of Oxford and Cambridge. In the public 
schools and socialized institutions with vocational 
work, however, it is the institution which serves. 
This service of the institution may be classified 
under two heads. In the case of the elementary 
schools to some extent, and of the high schools 
to a greater extent, our war work should be 
brought into them. In the technical, vocational, 
and trade schools the institution should reach out 
towards the war. In the first instance the func- 
tion of the elementary and secondary school 
should be to adhere to the purposes for which 
they were created. The function of the higher 
technical, vocational, and trade schools should be 
to prepare the skilled students to take the places 
of those who are called to military service; to 
give scientific training, indispensable in war; to 
assist, through courses for the blind and crippled, 
in the reeducation of those disabled in war serv- 
ice, — that is, our technical schools may be schools 
of special preparation and industrial readjustment. 
We shall observe, in working out the problem, 
that we have offered to us by the war an oppor- 
tunity to make our schools better by bringing 
education closer to life, not only materially but 
spiritually. If we have failed to train our youth 



8 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

in cooperation and service to the State in the 
past, the war gives us a new motive. For to 
impart skill in use of hand or brain without 
teaching collective responsibility is to fail in our 
national duty. To our schools we must look as 
the agencies which are to carry on the great 
work of education in service, a noble and pur- 
poseful objective for which to work, directing 
the growth of our children into an efficient and 
devoted citizenship. 

Someone will urge : " The war will soon be over 
and we shall hardly get started in war service 
before there will be no need for such service." 

Of course those who believe, or at least seem 
to practice the belief, that the schools are to lag 
far behind every economic, industrial, and social 
movement and are to be mere looking-glasses for 
the workaday world, — such people would not be 
expected to bring the war into the schools until 
some historian had written a text setting forth the 
dates, drawing the battle lines, naming the com- 
manding generals, and picturing the final bound- 
aries determined by some Hague conference. It 
is such professional obstructionists who make no 
provision for the millions of our foreign born to 
learn the English language and American customs 
through the establishment of up-to-date methods 



BRINGING THE WAR INTO SCHOOLS 9 

in teaching the adult ilhterate. It is such laissez- 
faire persons who allow children to slide out of 
school unprepared physically, mentally, or vocation- 
ally for the life ahead. It is such who insist upon 
the disciplinary-value idea of subject- worth in the 
face of modern psychological thought. It is such 
conservatives who say that agriculture can be 
taught only on the farm; that it is the business 
of the factory to teach the trades; that girls may 
learn to cook from their mothers; that elementary 
courses in woodworking and freehand drawing 
constitute vocational training ; that algebra, Latin, 
ancient history, and trigonometry are essential 
features of the curriculum for training capable 
stenographers. It is these people who say that 
" the public schools of America are bulwarks of 
the nation," and consistently erect bulwarks against 
every agency which actually reflects the social and 
economic needs of the day. 

But those who believe that the school should 
study the past and live in the present and strive 
for a better future will find that the war brings 
out for the schools not only the lessons of a day, 
but the needs and opportunities of a decade. 

It has been stated that movements or men 
unresponsive to the present world crisis and fail- 
ing to meet present needs and opportunities do 



lo OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

not deserve to exist. Whether the statement be 
exactly true or not, it is evident that the up-to-the- 
minute man or the hve school or the progressive 
industrial establishment or the efficient department 
of government is responding to the national need 
in exact proportion to the response made to the 
needs and opportunities existing before war was 
declared. 

It is this responding power which is testing 
our men and women, our institutions of govern- 
ment, our industries, and our schools. Nothing 
makes this clearer than the daily news. We read 
that since the Railroads War Board has been estab- 
lished, the railroads have increased their operating 
efficiency 26 per cent, with the result that they are 
now handling twice the freight and have 75 per 
cent fewer idle cars ; that aeroplane motors are 
soon to be built as rapidly as a certain well-known 
automobile can be ; that standardized destroyers 
and merchant ships are to be turned out by the 
scores; that dyes equal to those formerly imported 
have been evolved; that prominent men of means 
have contributed their services to men in authority 
in Washington ; that well-known social workers are 
on their way to France and Belgium. 

All these things and countless others show us 
how a military necessity has brought out the best 



BRINGING THE WAR INTO SCHOOLS ii 

that is within us. And the best of it all is that 
there is nothing which we are doing in the way 
of making standardized products or in extending 
the services of useful men that cannot be perma- 
nently useful after the war is over. Our mili- 
tary necessity is teaching us new and permanently 
effective standards of making things. Meanwhile, 
are the schools of America to fail by not render- 
ing service to a nation in time of need, by not 
establishing permanently effective standards in the 
making of useful boys and girls, — "boys and girls," 
as Roosevelt puts it, "who realize that they are 
a part of Uncle Sam's team" ? 

The schools and colleges that were alive before 
the war began are breathing the breath of life more 
deeply now. Those which were asleep are waking 
up and not only learning to serve, but through 
this service learning to live. A little school in 
Vermont in a report on what it has in the way of 
war equipment states that it has only ten benches, 
but adds that these have been used by sixty boys 
who take manual training. A school system which 
can be as efficient as that in time of peace may 
naturally be expected to state, as it does in re- 
sponse to a recent inquiry: "Our instructor has 
been on the job all summer, helping especially 
where the boys and girls are working on the 



12 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

farms or have gardens. He has also organized 
canning and drying clubs and is giving instruction 
to different groups of boys." 

The university which has extension courses in 
time of peace naturally has war extension courses. 
The prominent business man of Massachusetts who 
for years interested himself in state Y. M.C. A. 
work would naturally be expected to enlist, as he 
has, for Y.M.C.A. work in France. Now if the 
college or institution or individual serves in time 
of need because of a habit of serving, might it 
not be equally true that a somnolent individual or 
school, if once stirred to service, might through 
such service learn always to serve.'' 

At this time the government of the United 
States is going to learn how to become efficient. 
The state colleges of agriculture are testing their 
former efficiency, — the test being the power to 
serve. Schools may now learn what it means to be 
efficient by the service which they may now ren- 
der. Not an activity is proposed nor a principle 
of educational practice given in the chapters which 
follow but should be brought into our schools in 
times of peace. 

We are going to sew now for the Red Cross 
because it is war time. Later we shall sew for 
institutions in our community. Now we are going 



BRINGING THE WAR INTO SCHOOLS 13 

to develop part-time schools because industry needs 
boys. Later we shall have cooperative courses be- 
cause boys at work need further schooling. Now 
we are placing city boys on farms because the 
farmers need labor. Later we shall place farms 
on the minds of boys because youth needs con- 
tact with nature. Now we have current-events dis- 
cussions about loans, submarines, aeroplanes, and 
I. W. W.'s because the government needs support. 
Later we shall teach the meaning of the same 
things because thoughtfully trained people are 
needed by the government. Now we are to teach 
patriotism and thrift because the nation needs 
them. Later we shall teach them because they 
are essential in themselves. 

Now we have extension courses in economical 
cooking for adult women as a war measure. Later 
we shall have it as a home measure. Now we are 
bringing adult women into the schools to receive 
instruction with their children. Later we shall 
do the same thing because it is the only sensible 
procedure under any and all conditions. Now 
we think in terms of reeducation of disabled sol- 
diers because of the immediate need of helping 
these honored men. Later we shall turn what we 
have learned to do for these men into better pro- 
visions for making self-supporting our crippled 



14 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

and blinded children who are now in dependent 
institutions being made still more dependent by 
the very nature of the poor apology for voca- 
tional training which is given them. Now we have 
clearly before us the need for industrial education 
because the government is crying for workers. 
Later we shall see the need for industrial educa- 
tion because those who are to work in the in- 
dustries need it. Now we hold a child-labor law 
before youth tempted by industry. Later we shall 
endeavor to hold before youth better opportunities 
for vocational, physical, and mental training in our 
schools as an inducement to stay in them. 

What are the schools and colleges going to do 
about it all ? Certainly they will not intentionally in- 
jure the cause of education by starting ill-developed 
ideas of war service. But the desire to avoid 
the bad should not by any means imply inaction. 
This is the psychological moment for all of us 
to justify our very existence as individuals or as 
parts of an institution or a movement. One could 
only pity a school man who recently said : " Really, 
I am envious of some of my colleagues. They 
have something to do at this time, while the subject 
which I am teaching can make no contribution." 

There has never been a time in our school life 
when taxpayers, boards of apportionment, women's 



BRINGING THE WAR INTO SCHOOLS 15 

clubs, state granges, boards of trade, could be 
made more interested in having the schools broaden 
out along lines of continuation-school and part-time 
work, differentiated courses in our high schools, 
physical-training courses, evening courses for adult 
illiterates, thrift measures and school savings, teach- 
ing of current events, more practical science work, 
teaching of agriculture, unit courses in household 
arts, and a score of other things which the school 
men of America say they want and which they 
are always saying " the public will not stand for." 

Shall we let the golden opportunity for enrich- 
ment pass until after the war, when cities will 
most certainly preach and practice poverty? 

Now is the time to evaluate our school subjects, 
to bring in the new if they are worth while, to 
scrap the old if they do not stand the test of 
national needs. If a community will not "stand for" 
cooking when the H. C. L. rises like a specter 
before our doors, it will never vote for household 
arts after the war. If a city school favorably located 
near the open country will not now extend its 
educational program to include community garden- 
ing when prices of farm products are excessive, 
it will hardly broaden out when the crisis of our 
material needs is over. If a state will not line up 
with the Federal Board of Vocational Education 



i6 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

for national aid for its vocational schools when its 
industries are crying for trained youth, it will 
never move forward in time of a normal demand. 
If we do not reorganize our schools to bring in 
the best while we may, we shall in all probability 
be required in the near future to discard some 
things which we have, without having any oppor- 
tunity to develop the new things which we have 
stated in our conventions and teachers' institutes 
that we earnestly desire. World conditions chal- 
lenge our schools. What is their program? 



CHAPTER II 

WAR AND COMMUNITY USES OF OUR SCHOOLS 

An evaluating test for each of our school subjects 
has at last been found. The test is the capacity 
of the subject to respond to a fiational need or a 
national ideal. In many instances of the countries 
concerned in this great war the schools as a whole 
have amply justified their existence, and many of 
the subjects taught have stood through this world 
emergency the acid test of meeting national needs. 
The scientific and efficiency spirit of Germany is 
reflected in the posters spread over Berlin : " Send 
your cherry, peach, and plum seeds to the school- 
house with your children," seeds being used for 
making fat and oil. The spirit of France has been 
reflected, as will be seen in the following pages, 
in the work of the teachers and the children for 
the preservation of that wonderful nationalism of 
France. The schools of England are reshaping 
themselves — in fact, are being remade — as a 
result of the shortcomings set forth by the war. 

The schools of America are to go forward. Pa- 
triotism now has a new meaning. The principal 

17 



i8 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

from his school platform has opportunity for an- 
nouncements and talks other than those dealing 
with routine matters. The cooking teacher has 
opportunity to develop new recipes adapted to 
present needs. The teacher of history may redraw 
almost every day the map of Europe. The teacher 
of manual training may substitute problems in con- 
crete for those requiring high-priced wood mate- 
rials. The school buildings near soldiers' camps 
may, like the Washington (D. C.) buildings, be 
opened for educational purposes for soldiers, that 
they may take up general or special educational 
work. Teachers of English may have their pupils 
study President Wilson's messages of state as 
models of English composition and expressions of 
American democracy. 

The opportunity is before the schools and the 
children. There are in our school system three 
elements which may be of use in war: the build- 
ing itself with its equipment, the school population 
of boy and girl power, and the teaching force. 

In England, during the first year of the war, all 
three were called into requisition. Within a few 
months over looo school buildings were in tem- 
porary military use, and even on August i, 19 16, 
180 elementary- and 20 secondary-school buildings 
were still occupied for war work, — for hospitals, 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 19 

billeting of troops, housing of munition workers, etc., 
— the number of children displaced being 129,855. 
In many cases the use was expected to be tempo- 
rary, but many buildings have been retained perma- 
nently. The children whose schooling was thus 
interrupted, when too young for employment, gener- 
ally drifted aimlessly into juvenile delinquency, 
while those older, although below the established 
employment age, went to farms and munition fac- 
tories. That is, the taking away of the school 
building was concomitant with the suspension of 
restrictions on age of employment and hours of 
labor. The children of the prosperous class were 
likewise affected by the departure of over 50 per 
cent of the teachers for military service. 

These many interruptions in the carrying on of 
educational work were the result of the short-war 
fallacy; they were emergency measures adopted to 
meet a condition which it was generally supposed 
would last but a few months. When, however, it 
was realized by statesmen and the public that the 
interference with education and the suspension of 
laws regulating employment were resulting in ir- 
reparable injury to health and morals of an em- 
ployed child population under 13 years of age of 
150,000, and an idle younger population variously 
estimated at from 200,000 to 300,000, corrective 



20 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

measures were adopted. American schools must 
learn from English experience what to avoid. 
There are many legitimate uses of schools which 
England is now employing; and the warnings of 
interested English educators should keep our legis- 
latures and municipalities from breaking down the 
compulsory-education laws or converting our schools 
into industrial plants. Our aim, as previously stated, 
should be to bring the war to the school curriculum 
for educational purposes, not to take the schools 
into the war, losing sight of their definite function. 
In France, at the outbreak of the war, many of 
the school buildings were requisitioned, and 30,000 
teachers were called to the colors. The hardship 
to the young resulting from this patriotic sacrifice 
was met as far as possible by the generosity of 
private citizens who gave rooms or buildings for 
classes, and by professional men, too old for service, 
who volunteered to carry on the work of teaching. 
France was swift to realize that education must be 
carried on at all costs. In districts near the fight- 
ing line schools were of necessity transformed into 
hospitals, often with a staff of women teachers tem- 
porarily acting as nurses and attendants; but it 
has been the policy of the department of public 
instruction to regard this service as temporary, and 
the teachers as conscripted for education. 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 21 

The trying circumstances under which the schools 
have been carried on, serving nobly during the term 
after hours and during vacations, make their achieve- 
ments a record of honor. In the country districts 
where all the local officials were mobilized, the 
teacher became the sole agent of government, mak- 
ing out passports, requisitions, relief lists, etc., pro- 
curing food, operating a public kitchen, acting as 
postmaster, doing guard duty, and rendering num- 
berless other services to the community. One of 
the first tasks of the primary schools was to under- 
take entire care of children left without adequate 
protection. In country districts the teachers were, 
in default of newspapers, the dispensers of official 
information, explaining government loans and giv- 
ing talks on the progress of the war. Thus the 
entire village was brought into the schoolhouse, 
which became the real center of the community. 

In the United States and Canada the schools 
may well copy some of the measures initiated in 
Europe. That we are 3000 miles from the actual 
battleground ought, for the present, to keep us 
from considering any lowering of educational bars 
or from converting our buildings into purposes 
other than educational. Europe advises us that 
such transformation is of an emergency nature and 
only to be made under stress of an invasion. 



22 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

It is the purpose of this chapter to consider 
some general uses of our buildings, our equip- 
ment (including the teaching force), and the activi- 
ties of our pupils, which have been made in the 
past two or three years, excluding and reserving 
for the most part for later discussion the introduc- 
tion of war work in manual-training, domestic-arts, 
and domestic-science courses, and the part-time 
agricultural labor. 

An important use of our schools, and one which 
should be made more general throughout the 
country, is that of a distributing center for gov- 
ernment pamphlets, information cards, etc. In 
New York City the various welfare committees 
appointed by Mayor Mitchel designated the public 
schools as mediums through which to circulate 
papers on "safety first," fire prevention, uses of 
various food products, etc., and thus reach the 
families of the vast foreign population through 
their children. The city's pledges of national 
loyalty to be signed by adults were circulated 
by the pupils shortly after the declaration of war. 
Wider publicity can be given to federal regula- 
tions, tax measures, employment modifications, 
etc., by the distribution of notices to pupils of 
upper grades, following the explanation by the 
teacher. While our people as a whole read, though 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 23 

hastily, the newspapers morning and evening, and 
may find in them all governmental measures, it is 
nevertheless true that we shall be assured of a 
wider distribution of information by using the pupil 
as the carrier of it to the home. In England the 
schools, as well as the Boy Scouts organization, 
have served as national distributing agencies for 
war-oflBce notices. Parliamentary information, and 
agricultural propaganda. 

A portion of a letter from Sir Robert Blair, 
chairman of the Education Committee of the Lon- 
don County Council, to Superintendent Maxwell 
of New York City, in May, 191 7, calls attention to 
the service of the schools in this connection. 

War has come upon us so unexpectedly that our people 
not only did not understand the true position but on the 
whole knew very little about the causes which had led to 
the outbreak. The public press, bookstalls, and the public 
libraries were considerably augmented by books and pam- 
phlets on the subject, and it was a natural prompting that 
gave rise to the issue to the schools of a considerable num- 
ber of documents, memoranda, and pamphlets. These cir- 
culars and pamphlets were mostly all issued within the first 
year of the war. The first phase of the pamphlets is his- 
torical, while the second became economical. The economi- 
cal phase in its first stages was concentrated on war savings 
for the purpose of war loans and in anticipation, by the 
provision of " nest eggs," of the dislocation that might 



24 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

occur at the end of the war. In its later stages — within 
the last six months — the economical phase has been directed 
chiefly to economy in food, owing to the menace of the 
submarine campaign. 

A further use of the school population in hours 
outside the daily session is that of giving help 
in taking a census. In England school teachers 
and pupils did most of the work of compiling the 
National Register, a card census of inhabitants. 
To some extent similar work has been done in 
the United States, such as the taking of the agri- 
cultural census in fifty-six counties (no census was 
taken for the counties of Hamilton, Kings, Queens, 
Richmond, and New York) in the state of New 
York in April, 191 7. Under the joint auspices of 
the State Food Supply Commission and the State 
Education Department a survey was ordered of 
the agricultural resources of the state and of the 
requirements for increased production, the details 
of which were worked out at Ithaca at the State 
College of Agriculture. Through the appointed 
county enumerators, instructions were transmitted 
to the various school districts. 

The actual work of this census was begun in 
most counties on April 23, the records being prac- 
tically all obtained by April 25, the teachers and 
pupils in each district, assisted when necessary 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 25 

by other persons, procuring the original facts from 
farmers and making the summaries for their school 
districts. From these records the state was within 
ten days furnished with the complete amount of 
seed and live stock wanted by farmers and for sale 
by farmers; with the statements of the transporta- 
tion difficulties; with the itemized needs of labor, 
fertilizer, and spray materials ; and with the com- 
plete enumeration of the state, — people, land, and 
live stock. 

Such work by pupils might well become an 
established yearly activity. The practice of gath- 
ering and tabulating information has an obvious 
arithmetical value; and the interest developed in 
investigating the resources of the community has 
an educational significance which should keep us 
from limiting it to emergency periods. 

The comparative table on page 26 (one of thirteen 
developed out of the census) not only illustrates 
facts which the children obtained, but also shows 
the magnitude of the work they undertook. 

One of the best community uses of the school is 
as a center for instruction in conserving food prod- 
ucts. With the absolute shortage of the world's 
food supply, Americans must anticipate this short- 
age in coming seasons and revert to the preserving 
methods of their grandparents, — measures fallen 



26 



OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 



into disuse in crowded cities because of lack of 
storage room and the ease with which the fresh 
products have been obtained, whatever the season. 

ACRES OF CROPS IN 56 COUNTIES IN NEW YORK WITH 
COMPARISONS FOR THE SAME COUNTIES IN 1909 



Crop 


Acres (U.S. 
Census, 1909) 


Acres grown 
IN 1916 


Acres expected 
to be grown in 

I9I7 


Corn for grain . . . 


511,339 


336,543 


495,469 


Corn for silo . 








259,082 


362,413 


422,867 


Oats . . . 








1,302,041 


1,102,004 


1,250,346 


Barley . . . 








79,955 


92,422 


II 1,634 


Buckwheat 








286,128 


257,911 


300,090 


Winter wheat 








289,126 


344,278 


387,813 


Spring wheat 








289,126 


12,373 


32,425 


Rye. . . . 








130,449 


114,691 


120,239 


Field beans . 








115,695 


194,053 


275,790 


Alfalfa . . . 








35,343 


160,985 


181,912 


Other hay . . 








4,737,326 


4,073,333 


3,963,678 


Cabbage . . 








33,770 


38,898 


68,890 


Potatoes . . 








390,552 


305,649 


382,840 


Canning-factory crops "] 




44,098 


60,155 


Other vegetables and y 


131,686 






garden .... J 




58,340 


71,833 


Miscellaneous crops 


21,843 


35,056 


40,895 


Apples 




281,061 




346,633 


Cherries . . 








4,211 




12,414 


Peaches . . 








15,340 




50,149 


Pears . . . 








13,378 




36,802 


Plums . ... 








5,742 




8,569 


Vineyards . . 








52,999 




52,350 


Small fruit 








22,388 




28,171 


Total . . 








8,719,454 




8,701,964 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 27 

Even villages which have no gas supply may 
follow the example of cities and towns in using 
the school kitchen, already installed as part of a 
domestic-science equipment or newly supplied by 
popular subscription, as a community canning cen- 
ter. Certainly schools are as well adapted for the 
purpose as department stores and Young Women's 
Christian Associations, which have been leaders in 
the movement. 

The teaching of methods of preserving is pri- 
marily the function of a school, and every suitable 
school building should be employed for it. The 
old-fashioned preserving meant time, drudgery, ex- 
pense, quantities of sugar, and doubtful results. A 
demonstration of the newer methods and the oppor- 
tunity for community canning should be given by 
the school to the neighborhood. Community can- 
ning induces a far more effective conservation of 
food than is possible for the individual kitchen. 
Few households can afford to buy and store the 
vast kettles, the perfected drying and dehydrating 
ovens, which can be included in the equipment of 
a school teaching the scientific preserving of food 
and vegetables. As this is done almost wholly in 
the summer, it would not interfere with the term's 
work of the pupils and, in fact, offers the high- 
school girls an excellent opportunity to assist in 



28 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

civic service of a most practical nature. In the 
summer of 191 7 Seattle maintained 20 centers for 
home-economics teaching for adult women, the 
government bulletin " How to Select Food " being 
used as a textbook. 

There have been wholesome experiments in com- 
munity canning in Lakewood, and in Bernards 
Township, New Jersey. In the latter in each 
school was an experienced teacher to supervise the 
work of preserving performed by high-school girls 
of the neighborhood, the fruits and vegetables 
being sold by the townspeople to the school or 
brought by them to be conserved by cooperative 
canning for their own use in the future. This 
service of the girls was on an equality with that 
of the boys who belonged to the agricultural army. 
In Kansas City the surplus garden products canned 
by schoolgirls were used for the school lunches. 

England's schools now have " open days " on 
which parents may be admitted to receive the in- 
struction given to the children in the economical 
cooking of the food which the food controller's 
instructions show is likely to be available for gen- 
eral consumption; also (quoting from a letter from 
Sir Robert Blair of the London County Council, 
May 30, 191 7) the responsible mistresses of the 
evening schools and the domestic-economy staff 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 29 

employed in these schools are organizing traveling 
kitchens in 29 boroughs within the county. These 
traveling kitchens form practically a demonstration 
set of apparatus by which the simplest forms of 
cookery can be shown to 100 or 200 people. The 
demonstrations are well attended, and the people 
in small villages thus have the opportunity of 
those in larger settlements to learn from experts 
methods of making palatable the food products less 
well understood. 

It may be urged that community canning has its 
place outside cities of the first class. New York 
City certainly cannot be held to be the center of 
an agricultural district, and yet valuable experi- 
ments in food conservation are being made there. 
One is concerned primarily with the prevention of 
waste. Of the thousands of pounds of perishable 
vegetables and fruit which are brought each day to 
the produce piers, much is prohibited from being 
sold to retailers because of injuries received in trans- 
portation. When more than 20 per cent has been 
injured, it has not paid wholesalers to salvage the 
uninjured portion. As a result, a ruinous quantity 
of produce has gone to waste, often being dumped 
in the harbor for want of better disposal. The 
loss as estimated by the board of health has been 
225,000 pounds a week. 



30 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

To save this food by making quick use of it, in 
July, 191 7, Mayor Mitchel's Committee of Women 
on National Defense opened a conservation kitchen 
in a disused school building in the Williamsburg 
Bridge section. Here the uncertain quantity of 
vegetables salvaged from the produce piers was 
brought to the school, picked over, and sterilized, 
partly by paid labor, partly by the volunteer labor 
of members of the Women's University Club and 
other organizations, or city women who were willing 
to contribute their labor in the cause of food sav- 
ing. This work was aided by the State Food Sup- 
ply Commission and New York's board of health, 
one of whose inspectors passed judgment on the 
food used in the canning and drying experiments. 
The salvaged food was brought from the piers to 
the kitchens by Boy Scouts, ubiquitously useful in 
any public undertaking. If it had not been that 
the kitchen was opened in vacation, the school 
population would have had its share of work to 
do. To this kitchen any woman might go to be 
taught processes or actually to can produce. 

While it was not possible to use all the produce 
brought in, even by keeping the kitchen as full of 
workers as space would allow and cooking as much 
as 480 gallons of food at a time, the work in this 
old school building is illustrative of what can be 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 31 

done in community centers to eliminate waste, and 
is a vital example of the efficient use of a school 
building in vacation. The cost in this case was 
met by special contributions of organizations and 
individuals. But in smaller places this work might 
be maintained by the town itself on a less elabo- 
rate scale. Such work should not be limited to the 
war period. It is a practical and efficient plan for 
all time. 

The continued war will undoubtedly increase not 
only the price but the scarcity of cotton and woolen 
goods. Where it has hitherto not paid to make 
over clothing repeatedly because of the cheapness 
and ease with which new garments and children's 
wear have been procured, it is now important to 
understand thrifty saving of all kinds of fabrics 
and apparel. 

Home-economics women of Berkeley, California, 
aided in collecting and making over old clothing. 
In Portland, Oregon, a cleaner and dyer took as his 
bit of service the cleaning and disinfecting of all the 
clothing which was remade by the school children. 

In England's county schools there have been 
held exhibitions of thrift, to show children when 
and how economies can be practiced. Some of the 
examples shown under the heading of " Utilization 
of Waste Material " were as follows : old linen 



32 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

collars and cuffs made into baggage labels, window 
cleaners made from pieces of old gloves, house slip- 
pers made from old felt hats, mops made of bits 
of rags fastened to a nail. Ways were shown of 
making use of scraps of wool left over from knit- 
ting, the wasting of an inch of wool being regarded 
as treasonable in the country's shortage; methods 
of refooting stockings were also displayed, as well as 
many uses for pieces of worn table and bed linen 
and old carpets. 

In times of normal plenty such exhibitions would 
not attract attention, but no greater evidence of 
the reduced state of a nation at war can be had 
than the seriousness with which these exhibitions 
of household thrift have been viewed by the popu- 
lation. A clipping from a newspaper of rural Eng- 
land requests that children go into the pastures 
and pick from the bushes the bits of wool which 
the sheep have rubbed off. 

For several years, at least, there will be high 
prices and scarcity of materials. Our children must 
be taught the necessity of preventing waste of 
fabrics as well as of food. Millions of dollars worth 
of cotton and wool have been destroyed in military 
and munition use. But it is not only because war 
conditions have made material scarce and high that 
thrift in their use must be insisted upon in every 




Old-fashioned melhotU >., |.,.-ii\iii^ must at;aiii prevail. There is educa- 
tional value in community conservation. Montclair (New Jersey) boys made 
community evaporators, having a capacity of from five to eight bushels of 
fruit a day, at a cost of only $io 




A mowing machine is a problem in high-school mechanics, and these farm 
cadets of New York State see, perhaps for the first time, a use for it 




A day's outing for a purpose. Albany and Troy (New York) orphan-asylum 
boys on their way to " do their bit " in the currant fields 




A lesson in service geography. Boys from Albany and Troy (New York) 

picking currants, near Hudson (New York), which were preserved in 

Yonkers Trades School for shipment to France 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 33 

household ; we must remember that billions of dol- 
lars will be required to pay for this war and each 
household will be required to make its contribution. 
Expenditures in every direction must be curbed 
and the wise disposition of every dollar must be 
made. A year or so ago the Bankers Association 
of America launched a campaign for thrift teaching. 
We were then told that, as individuals, we must 
save for the future. The present high cost of liv- 
ing shows that we are obliged to save in the pres- 
ent in order to live in the present, but the future 
will tell us to save in order that we, as a nation, 
may pay for the war. 

Many community services may be rendered dur- 
ing the war by the principal of a school. He may, 
as has been done, organize patriotic meetings, en- 
listing the aid of the churches and arousing the 
interest of chambers of commerce, civic clubs, and 
women's clubs in the Red Cross, the Liberty Loan, 
and school war gardens. His assembly exercises 
may be made vital through talks to the pupils on 
opportunities for war service ; through platform rec- 
ognition of boys and girls rendering special farm, 
garden. Red Cross, and food-conservation help ; by 
placing on a conspicuous bulletin a roll of honor 
of graduates and students engaged in such work; 
by keeping the school in touch with graduates who 



34 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

are enlisted in the army and navy by reading their 
letters to the school and sending school packets to 
them. He may advise economy in the use of foods 
and clothing, the elimination of expenditures in 
soda water, ice cream, and gum, and the sacrifice 
of pleasure for national ends. He may urge the use 
of savings in the purchase of government bonds 
and war-savings certificates. Where the school has 
been raising money for pictures or a phonograph, 
he may suggest that the funds raised be used for 
the purchase of one or more government bonds, 
to be held by the school as an asset until the close 
of the war, when the bond may be sold and the 
money used for its original purpose of buying the 
phonograph or pictures. In the case of some pri- 
vate secondary schools, and large public schools 
like the Washington Irving and DeWitt Clinton 
high schools. New York, the pupils and teachers 
have subscribed money and given entertainments 
for the purchase of an ambulance, the gift of the 
school to the American Expeditionary Force. In 
one New York City school, through the efforts of 
a student organization. Liberty Loan bonds to the 
amount of ^479,800 were sold. 

The principal in country districts should make 
himself fully informed of the details of the federal 
farm-loan plan, the sources of available seed supply, 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 35 

the posters and bulletins of nation and state re- 
garding the mobilization of schools and colleges, 
and, of course, he should be especially active in 
encouraging the home-garden projects. 

A correspondent in the London Times, June 14, 
191 7, writing of that indispensable teaching of thrift 
in household affairs, of making the present genera- 
tion of young girls intelligently self-sufficient in 
domestic and industrial life, cries, " This brings us 
to the crux of the whole situation : Who shall teach 
the teachers ? " The government and state bulle- 
tins on food production and conservation, the liter- 
ature sent out by state councils of defense and 
public safety on improved methods of preserving, 
the pronouncements by banking houses on thrift 
measures and means of attaining them, the Boy 
Scouts, Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. leaflets on war 
gardens and food economies are, in America, 
beginning to answer this question. 

Assuredly the war places an additional burden 
on the teachers and gives them a new opportunity 
for educating the pupils. A teacher does not 
have to belong to the department of domestic 
arts and science to organize Red Cross circles 
nor to instruct girls in food conservation. A ten- 
minute talk each morning by teacher or pupils, 
before the opening of school, with discussion on 



36 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

such topics as " Why a man with a hundred dol- 
lars to invest should buy a Liberty Bond," " New 
occupations open to women because of the war," 
" The reason for the scarcity of certain prod- 
ucts," " Home substitutes for various manufac- 
tured necessities," and many others suggested by 
new conditions should be very helpful. 

An unusually significant experiment known as 
the " War Savings " movement has been made in 
English schools. On May 5, 1916, the Board of 
Education issued a circular asking for the assist- 
ance of local education authorities in making 
known through public elementary schools the 
facilities afforded by the issue of War Savings 
certificates. Then, with the cooperation of these 
authorities and teachers, special lessons were given 
on the subject, and copies of a leaflet explaining 
the purpose of the War Savings Association were 
widely distributed to the parents through their 
children. As a result a large number of War Sav- 
ings associations were formed in direct connection 
with the schools. The success of the movement 
is evident from the records given in the report of 
the Board of Education for 191 5-1 91 6. In one 
populous midland county the great majority of the 
schools have established associations ; in another, a 
northern county, some 70 per cent of the schools 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 37 

have taken part and record nearly 10,000 sub- 
scribers. In one midland town a school of about 
1400 children purchased certificates to the value 
of ^585 in three months. But it is not only 
in large schools that the pupils have contributed 
generously; a remote little school in a northern 
county, with only 10 children on its register, has 
10 subscribers to its credit and has saved ^35, 
buying 43 certificates. 

In view of the fact that successive issues of bonds 
must be made by the United States and other gov- 
ernments of the world, this method of making sub- 
scription to the war loan popular is worthy of 
attention. The public schools have, as never before, 
the opportunity of showing the practical value of 
investing, in peace as well as in war time, in gov- 
ernment and other bonds. Pupils should realize 
the difference between money invested in a way 
to be beneficial not only to the investor but to 
his state and country, and money invested in 
ordinary channels. 

New York State teachers had an opportunity 
similar to those of England. The Regents of the 
University of the state of New York gave formal 
approval of a plan by which teachers throughout 
the public schools of the state could aid the Liberty 
Loan committee of the Federal Reserve Bank in 



38 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

giving instruction and information about the second 
Liberty Loan. A special committee was appointed 
by the Board of Regents to act in a supervisory 
capacity to keep the State Education Department 
in touch with the large financial interests con- 
ducting the loan. The secretary to Commissioner 
Finley, as the representative of the Regents and 
the State Education Department, was assigned for 
temporary services in the office of the Loan 
committee. 

The program in brief was to have the teachers 
act as agents for subscriptions for the Liberty Loan. 
They distributed blanks to pupils in the school, 
who in turn took them to their parents. They 
were encouraged to subscribe themselves. They 
did not handle any money or checks, but turned 
the subscription blanks over to the local bank, 
which was, of course, in direct touch with the Loan 
committee in New York City. 

A primer of instruction for teachers was pre- 
pared in the simplest possible terms. As published 
by the Publicity Bureau of the United States 
Treasury Department it was called " A Source 
Book of the Second Liberty Loan." This primer 
explained in detail the nature of the bonds, their 
security, and the terms and prices ; it described 
the nature of bond markets in general, the sources 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 39 

from which interest is paid, the previous records 
of United States bonds, and all other matter which 
was of value in elementary financial instruction. It 
was all set forth in a way which was very helpful 
not only in assisting in the sale of bonds but in 
the larger sense of furthering instruction in bonds, 
interest, discounts, etc., in connection with work 
in arithmetic. And in what better way could arith- 
metical instruction be furthered ? 

It is highly probable that this plan of informing 
the public relative to government issues of bonds 
and certificates, initiated in New York, will extend 
to all parts of the country in connection with the 
next Loan campaign. 

How the responsibility of the teacher has been 
met in France is in part suggestive. The teachers 
have collected large funds to finance the enterprise 
of caring for thousands of families of Belgian and 
French refugees. They also collected from the 
civilian population several millions of francs, the 
teachers taxing themselves according to a fixed 
schedule. They have been especially successful in 
bringing to light for investment stores of hidden 
gold in the homes of provincial savers. Surpris- 
ing results have been attained through their 
persistent, methodical propaganda. In one large 
provincial town, after a talk to the older pupils by 



40 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

the mistress of the school, in four days an amount 
equal to 7200 francs was brought in. In the same 
school the following composition was given out to 
the pupils as part of an admission examination 
in penmanship. 

THE GOLD OF FRANCE i 

France has need of its gold to defend its invaded ter- 
ritory. It is a sacred duty for every French man and woman, 
rich or poor, to send to the coffers of the State the hundreds 
of louis from their strong boxes, the few louis hidden in 
the linen chest at home, even the single louis in the chil- 
dren's toy bank. To keep in one's own possession, self- 
ishly, the money which could serve our dear France is a 
crime against patriotism. So, little girls, do not hesitate 
to break open your banks, even if they have only a half 
louis inside, and gladly take in exchange the note which 
the Bank of France will give you. More than that, in your 
vacation in the country, set yourselves to get grandmother 
to empty her stocking, — she is sometimes rather stingy 
with her money. But you know well enough how to coax 
those who love you when you want a toy, or ornament, or 
bonbons. Use your influence with your grandparents now, 
so that they will bring into the public treasury the gold 
of France. In this way you will have contributed to the 
coming victory that we are all hoping for, you will have 
helped our brave soldiers to clear away the German whose 
presence defiles our land. Go, then, all of you ! Hunt out 
all the money that is lying idle. It is for France ! 

^ Edouard Petit, De I'ecole a la guerre, p. 175. Paris, 1916. 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 41 

Thus the schools have worked to bring to light 
the hoarded gold of thrifty peasants for investment 
in the national loan. 

Tangible as this service of the teachers has been 
to France, of greater importance has been their 
work of making clear to the villages the cause of 
France. In November, 19 14, the Department of 
Public Instruction sent out an appeal to the 
professional and volunteer teachers in the second- 
ary schools, saying that the schools must adapt 
their program to the duties and needs created by 
the hostilities. 

The teachers will do their best to make the schools 
serve in the national defense. In the evenings the old 
men, the youths, and the women will gather together, and 
the teachers will tell them the news, explain things that 
happen, speak to them of patriotism, and read to them 
from our writers whose pages are inspired with the glorious 
deeds of our history past and present. 

It is reported that in the girls' schools in France 
war has changed the whole aspect of education. 
History, geography, lectures on literature, subjects 
for literary composition or moral instruction, — in 
fact everything, — is treated from the point of view 
of country and of patriotic duty. In music practically 
nothing is sung but the " Marseillaise," the " Chant 
du Depart," and the national songs of the Allies. 



42 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

Reading is confined often to official military orders 
and reports, while drawings are usually of war 
material or characters. 

It is no less the duty of our teachers to make 
clear to their pupils the " cause " of America. Soon 
after the opening of the European war a United 
States senator traveled through the belligerent 
countries. His articles on Europe at war com- 
mented caustically on the ignorance of the English 
working people of the cause of the war, and of the 
purpose for which the Allies were fighting. An 
article on America at war could truthfully con- 
tain like criticism of a considerable portion of 
our population. 

Shortly after the United States entered the war 
a teacher in one of our largest city high schools, 
where a large proportion of the pupils are of either 
foreign birth or foreign parentage, asked 200 pupils 
of from 14 to 18 years to write a brief statement of 
what they considered to be the cause of America's 
entrance into the war. While these answers covered 
an incredible range of inaccuracy, not one showed 
an understanding of the events which led to the 
declaration of April, 191 7. " Congress has declared 
war so that the rich folks can get richer," " We 
are at war because this is a rich man's country," 
predominated as. replies. When asked what a citizen 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 43 

owed his country in return for political and reli- 
gious freedom, students replied in as vague and 
cynical a way as to the first question. 

To combat this ignorance of national motives 
the teacher distributed copies of President Wilson's 
address of April 2, with the ostensible purpose of 
analyzing it as an exercise in argument and expo- 
sition, — a study which finally resulted in enabling 
these students to make intelligent, if occasionally 
unsympathetic, answers to questions regarding the 
nation's action and policy. 

Now to residents of favored parts of the country 
where the population is English speaking and 
largely American born, inheriting American ideals 
and traditions, the ignorance of these high-school 
pupils seems exceptional, but educators know from 
experiments made in colleges and secondary insti- 
tutions that the majority of students are not intel- 
ligent on modern events of national significance, 
any more than is the average worker. Nearly all 
high schools have in their curriculum the study 
of current events, whether in history or oral Eng- 
lish courses. It is the duty of the teacher to use 
the study in such a manner as to obtain a patri- 
otic reaction to the topics presented and discussed, 
and in this manner to make clear why we are 
fighting and what we are fighting for. 



44 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

Out of this war we must obtain a new spirit of 
patriotism. Now is the time to strike. Events 
depicted in the daily press show how great is the 
need. In this connection the Council of Defense 
of Connecticut, in an effective campaign working 
through the schools, states in a recent publication : 

The war is bound to have a deep influence on American 
life and thought, and we should be watchful to direct this 
into right channels. The country is shot through and 
through with the one-sided philosophy that the State is an 
institution to be leaned upon and filched from, but not to 
be served. The schools should train the children in the 
fundamental contract between citizen and State. The idea 
of mutuality should be developed. The State owes duties 
to the citizen, but the citizen owes reciprocal duties to 
the State. 

In September, 19 14, as soon after the declaration 
of war as military and agricultural conditions would 
permit the schools to open, the French Minister of 
Public Instruction sent an official circular to all of 
the schools. He stated that the first lesson in every 
school should be devoted to France : to its present 
danger and its heroic resistance; to the ideals of 
humanity and justice for which she fought ; to the 
memory of the valor of her soldiers ; to the justice 
of her cause. He desired to make certain at the 
earliest possible moment that every school child 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 45 

in France take his part spiritually and intellectually 
in the epic conflict which France was waging for 
right and justice. 

His decree outlining the first lesson for every 
child of France expresses so clearly the French 
attitude and feeling that the following free render- 
ing of the circular letter is well worth reading. 

The lycees, colleges, and public schools are about to 
open everywhere except where the superior need of impro- 
vised hospitals in school buildings caring for our glorious 
wounded renders this impossible. 

I decree that on the opening day in every city and in 
every class the first words of the teacher to the pupils 
shall be designed to bring the hearts of the pupils into 
accord with the sacred struggle in which our armies are 
engaged. 

Throughout the entire country at the same hour the sons 
of France shall pay respect to the spirit of their nation and 
shall pay tribute to the heroism of those who are pouring 
out their blood for liberty, justice, and human right. 

The words of the teachers on this occasion should be 
simple and to the point. They should be adapted to the 
age of their hearers, some of whom are children, some 
youths. Each of our schools has sent its quota of combat- 
ants to the firing line, — professors, teachers, or pupils ; the 
words of the teacher to the class should call forth the 
noble remembrance of the dead, in order to exalt their 
example and engrave it forever in the memory of the chil- 
dren. Moreover, in its broad lines, calmly, clearly, they 



46 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

should tell the causes of the war, — the aggression without 
excuse, — and how before the civilized world, France, eter- 
nal champion of progress and right, has been compelled to 
prepare herself, with her valiant allies, to repel the assault 
of the modern barbarians. 

The furious conflict which we are carrying insistently to 
victory adds each day to the glory of our soldiers a thou- 
sand deeds of heroism from which the teacher may take the 
best part of this lesson. He should prefer these supreme 
models of action to the vain repetition of phrases, in order 
to make a fit impression on the minds of the children. 

A vivid recollection of this first school hour ought to 
remain imprinted forever in the spirit of the pupil, who 
is the citizen of to-morrow. The teacher who has known 
how to make this impression will remain worthy of the 
confidence of the republic. 

America too vi^ill have its lesson sheets, and a 
most timely one on " Lessons of the Great War 
in the Classroom" has been prepared for teachers 
of history by the National Board for Historical 
Service (Washington, D.C.) with the distinct pur- 
pose of suggesting certain aspects of history, ancient 
and modern, which have gained a new interest in 
the light of the great war. The following excerpts 
are extremely suggestive of special opportunities 
and obligations for teachers in school service: 

There is the duty of keeping, for teacher and for pupil, 
the. habit of at least trying to see things as they really were 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 47 

and are. . . . Every great war is fought not merely by 
armies and navies, but by the governments at home which 
direct the fighting forces. ... No one can take an intelH- 
gent part in a great conflict for the safety of democracy 
under an orderly system of international law unless he is 
really interested in and knows something about other nations 
than his own. . . . There is some connection between the 
conditions which made the valleys of the Tigris and 
Euphrates one of the great seats of ancient civilization and 
those which are making Mesopotamia to-day one of the 
chief theaters of the great war. . . . This terrible catas- 
trophe, with its wholesale destruction of the finest products 
of human civilization, its life and death struggle between 
opposing nations and opposing ideals, has seemed a reason 
for thinking not less but more of the great mysterious forces 
which brought about the rise and decline of the ancient 
empire. . . . Great campaigns are again carried on where 
Xenophon marched with his famous Ten Thousand, where 
Alexander the Great led his armies to the conquest of 
the East. . . . The opportunity must now be seized to 
study the whole of Europe and its influence on and con- 
nections with the rest of the world. . . . Some account 
should be given of the way in which the ruling class in 
Prussia has been able to use science, modern business 
methods, and social legislation in the service of the military 
state. . . . War is the business not only of governments 
but of the nation as a whole, and there are few kinds of 
human activity which do not have some relation to its suc- 
cess or failure. . . . We are fighting partly, indeed, to 
defend international law on the high seas, but partly also to 
make tJie world, not merely America, "safe for democracy." 



48 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

Teachers are recognized as the instructing force 
of America. If they are not, who is ? If the coun- 
try sorely needs clear, definite, authentic informa- 
tion on the situation of the world and our own 
position as a belligerent power, who is to give it 
if not the teachers ? It is they who must inform 
and arouse. It is they who ought to participate in 
a speaking campaign which should be as deep as 
the danger, as wide as the country, and as high as 
the patriotic spirit of the people. They should be 
distributing agents for printed material which ana- 
lyzes the subject, and should be able to refer to 
the best and most available authorities and to put 
before pupils and the public the texts of the most 
important speeches, diplomatic notes, and other 
approved material to back up statements of fact. 

Strange as it may seem, it is the children's con- 
victions which take effect not only when as chil- 
dren they carry word to their parents but also 
when they come out of childhood into adult life. 

Was the boy in the New York high school right 
when he said, "It is a Wall Street war" ? Are our 
enemies justified in charging us with the same 
motives of self-interest and the abasement of other 
nations which animated themselves ? Are we really 
at war for conquest or seizure, or for the benefit 
of commerce, or for defense against aggressions 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 49 

that have not yet been made? And is it a dollar 
war for bankers and ammunition makers? 

It is to answer these and other questions that 
a systematic effort to inform and arouse the Amer- 
ican people should be taken up and carried into 
effect by public-school teachers, having in mind 
that the most effective and most important work 
may be done in the classroom in connection with 
lessons in civics and history. To wait for text- 
books on the present European war is to wait until 
it is over. To wait to put the study of the present 
war into a course of study in its chronological 
sequence is to wait until the next generation of 
children come upon the stage. No, now is the 
time for our schools to include the teaching of 
the war and to discuss officially proposed peace 
plans, when the street is alive with soldiers, when 
the newspapers display huge headlines and the bill- 
boards are covered with recruiting posters, when 
magazines furnish helpful material for teachers, and 
when the whole world is charged with feeling. 

The National Security League (New York City) 
has outlined a plan for public addresses and lec- 
tures, and it has printed a little book entitled 
"Wake Up, America." The following topics have 
been selected from an outline furnished by this 
league : 



50 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

Foreign military systems and international relations. 

Spirit of the American people as shown in our history of 
liberty and democracy. 

Causes of the war between the United States and Central 
Powers. 

First two and one-half years of the war in relation to the 
principles of the foreign policy of the United States. 

Universal military training and service as now provided by 
Congress. 

Organization and work of the army and navy : selection ; 
supplying needs. 

General military preparations in the country at large : ma- 
terials, transportation, and public finance. 

Duty of the citizen in relation to obligations of all citizens 
as an offset to benefits of citizenship. 

Service outside of military and naval ; as, for example, the 
munition work, transportation, building of ships and 
machinery, farming, etc. 

Faithfulness of foreign-born citizens. 

Need of efficiency and economy in local, municipal, and 
state governments. 

Description of modern warfare as defining the immediate 
task of the American people in regard to organiza- 
tion and action of the various services ; as, for example, 
men in the trenches, health protection, Red Cross, etc. 

Accessories ; for instance, patriotic music and recitations, 
flag marches, and parades. 

Illustrative material, such as maps and charts illustrating 
the problems of recruiting ; slides and movies ; posters 
in public places ; exhibitions of foreign posters. 



WAR AND COMMUNITY USES 51 

These topics as outlined here are not sufficiently 
related to the actual conflict. They are excellent 
from the formal point of view, but they fail to get 
at the center of living interest in the vital present 
moment of history. Often when it has been asked 
of the children in France : " What are you study- 
ing ? " " What are they teaching you ? " the answer 
has been : " The war, madam." " The war, mon- 
sieur." And if the question was taken up with 
the teacher, the answer has been: 

By means of our war map on which is marked the 
present position of the French and German troops, the 
particular spot in the line in which the parents of our 
boys and girls are fighting, we teach not only current 
history, but in the most vital way geography and many 
related subjects. 

By means of our use of great contemporary political 
documents, by the speeches of Viviani, Deschanel, Ribot, 
and the other statesmen, by the famous orders of Joffre, 
Petain, and our military leaders, by the interpretation of 
the war by our great philosophers, — we teach in the most 
vital way the need of the country, the ideals of France, 
and much of the history of France, By reason of the 
war work instituted in every school as part of the regular 
curriculum, we teach commercial geography, economics, 
and many branches of science as they are actually related 
to human life and experience, and not in the abstract 
manner in which they are treated in the textbooks. 



52 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

Mr. Albert Sarraut, Minister of Public Instruction 
in France in 1914-1915, said in a public address: 

If there remains in the schools of France a single 
teacher who has not been profoundly touched by the war 
and who goes about his usual occupation of teaching in 
the same way that he did prior to August 2, 19 14, teach- 
ing the same subjects in the same way, doing only the 
ordinary, familiar school tasks, whose work has not been 
entirely transformed and inspired by the war, we have yet 
to hear of him or her, and we do not believe that 
such exists. 

It is inevitable that many of our school subjects 
will change their emphasis after the war. To some 
teachers the awakening will be cruel, to others a 
blessing in the form of new opportunity. 



CHAPTER III 

THE FIELD FOR INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 

For ten years a group of men in America have 
been trying to convince Congress that we should 
set up a national program of secondary vocational 
education. As a precedent we have had a system 
of agricultural and mechanic-arts education of 
collegiate grade in existence for the last fifty 
years. But we have had in the past no system of 
national aid for promoting and maintaining a type 
of vocational education in agriculture, mechanic 
arts, and home-making, which would reach a much 
larger clientele than could possibly be touched 
through any land-grant college system. It has 
been an up-hill fight to get Congress to see the 
importance of providing vocational education for 
industrial workers. Bill after bill was introduced 
providing for national aid. These bills defined 
vocational education as including all types of in- 
dustrial, commercial, agricultural, and home-making 
schools, between the upper grammar grades and 
the college, whose controlling purpose is to fit for 
specific profitable employments and which receive 
pupils 14 years of age and over. 

53 



54 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

President Wilson in his second inaugural mes- 
sage called the country's attention definitely to 
the fact that a vocational-education bill was before 
Congress and that it ought to receive favorable 
consideration, not only on the grounds of educa- 
tional advantages contained in the bill, but also 
on the grounds that it fitted in with a national 
economic and industrial policy. 

Perhaps the measure would have met the fate 
of its predecessors if war had not been declared. 
Friends of the measure feared lest discussion 
incident to national preparedness should over- 
shadow the vocational-education bill, but fortu- 
nately Congress saw that vocational education and 
national preparedness were linked together, and 
the bill passed almost unanimously. 

The full significance of the Smith- Hughes Bill, 
as it will always be known by those who worked 
for it, can hardly be appreciated. On the surface 
it merely creates a Federal Board of Vocational 
Education and provides that federal grants shall 
be made for the purpose of cooperating with the 
states in the promotion of industrial, agricultural, 
and home-making teaching. But if we scratch the 
surface we shall see that the federal money is not 
paid to local communities except after their work 
has been approved by a state board of control on 



INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 55 

the basis of this federal act, and the principles and 
policies which were adopted after conference be- 
tween the Federal Board and the state boards of 
control. It furthermore limits federal aid to definite 
vocational training and eliminates all aid to any 
dilettante or superficial types of practical-arts edu- 
cation which do not meet the idea of preparing 
young persons over 14 years of age for useful and 
profitable employment in agriculture, in the trades, 
in industries, or in home economics. It has been 
stated in preceding chapters, and will be empha- 
sized more than once in succeeding chapters, 
that the schools which are able to serve most 
effectively in time of war are the schools which 
are serving or may serve in times of peace. It 
has been and will again be shown that school 
methods usable in meeting a war emergency are 
the methods not only usable but desirable under 
normal conditions. 

There is absolutely nothing in the following 
discussion of the field for war service for indus- 
trial and trade-school education which does not 
have its direct application in promoting and ad- 
ministering a national system of vocational edu- 
cation. Definite suggestions are given for organiz- 
ing day-industrial, trade, part-time and continuation 
schools, evening vocational schools, trade classes. 



56 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

and off-time courses; for transferring the teaching 
equipment into the factory; for transferring the 
technical-supervision equipment of the factory to 
the school ; and for making commercial products. It 
will be seen that the service of our industrial and 
trade schools differs from the service of the in- 
dustrial and household-arts courses in the regular 
schools. A comparison of what is suggested for 
war service with what is required by the terms 
of the federal grant shows that the two are in 
accord. For example, the latter requires that all- 
day industrial schools must have at least half the 
time given over to the actual practice of a vocation 
on a useful or productive basis; that agricultural 
schools shall arrange for directed or supervised 
practice in agriculture either on a farm provided 
by the school or on other farms for at least six 
months a year; that part-time schools or classes 
must be established if the state and the com- 
munity expect to receive the full benefits of the 
federal grant for the salaries of teachers of the 
trade, home-economics, and industrial subjects ; and 
finally, that evening classes for industrial workers 
are provided in which the instruction is required 
to be supplemental to the daily employment. How- 
ever, for the duration of the war, at least, the last 
requirement needs modification. 



INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 57 

War preparedness undoubtedly influenced Con- 
gress to pass the Smith- Hughes Bill. War service 
of our vocational schools will undoubtedly influ- 
ence the vocational-education movement along right 
lines more than anything else which could possibly 
have happened. 

Industrial and trade schools stand ready to 
make their contribution for war service. Some 
rather unwisely, and certainly unthinkingly, sent 
telegrams to Washington, offering their equipment 
to the government. Others said that they would 
make ammunition. Still others announced that 
they would wait for the government to tell them 
what to do. In the early stages evidently most of 
them forgot that their chief, if not only, business 
must be, as it has been, that of training recruits 
for industry or giving trade extension work to those 
already in a chosen vocation. 

Of course we are all aware that new tasks of 
stupendous proportions are being undertaken by 
the country as measures for national defense, and 
that while a large army is being recruited and 
trained, a still larger army is being drawn into 
industrial production to equip and support the 
army and navy directly on the lines of defense. 
We know that $600,000,000 has been appropri- 
ated for aeroplane construction; that from 50,000 



58 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

to 100,000 shipbuilders are needed for our shipbuild- 
ing program ; that tool-makers and gauge-makers 
are needed in large numbers; that the govern- 
ment military service will require large numbers 
of mechanics in its quartermaster's, engineering, 
signal, aviation, and navy corps. 

In other words, there is convincing evidence that 
there are bound to be not only increased demands 
for labor but also changes in the relationship of 
labor demand and supply. There is going to be 
an enormous increase in the demand for specialist 
workers in metal, and considerable increase in the 
call for skilled all-round workers in metal; a ma- 
terial increase in the demand for woodworkers 
in shipyards; an increase in demand for workers 
in manufactured clothing and army equipment ; a 
great increase in demand for electrical workers in 
all lines, including operators, field men, telephone 
and telegraph service. We know that there will be 
a demand for automobile mechanics, gas-engine op- 
erators, plumbers, horseshoers, wheelwrights, steam 
engineers, bakers, cement workers, and gas and 
steam fitters. It is probable that there will be a 
diminution in the demand for printers ; for women 
in dressmaking, millinery, and novelty lines; for 
laborers on public works, including streets, sewers, 
water systems, public buildings, canals, and bridges. 



INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 59 

In short, we know that the war emergency will 
create an extraordinary demand for some kinds of 
labor, attended by a probable diminution of demand 
for other kinds, and there will be occasion for much 
shifting of labor from one occupation to another. 
It is obvious, furthermore, that many readjustments 
must be made by public and private industrial and 
trade schools in these days of war pressure. 

To determine what adjustments are most urgent, 
those in charge of these schools should go directly 
to the industries and confer as to what service is 
the most desired. It is practically useless to wait 
for industrial managers to come to the schools for 
help. In many cases they will not appreciate the 
fact that the schools can be of help. If, in times 
of peace, industry has hardly recognized the full 
possibilities of public vocational training, it is not 
likely that it would recognize it in the stress of 
increased production. Sir Robert Blair of London 
states that unless the educational staff of England 
had made it its business to satisfy the manu- 
facturers that it could train semiskilled workers, 
the vocational-training shops would have been 
obliged to close soon after the war started. He 
states that in the earliest days of the work of 
these training shops, the manufacturers were in- 
disposed to believe that industry had anything to 



6o OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

learn from trade or technical schools. The manu- 
facturers said that these schools were "academi- 
cally right and practically wrong." 

What industrial and trade schools can do for 
manufacturing plants will, of course, vary in each 
community. Each manufacturing center has its 
own sets of activities. Proper military authorities 
should be approached by administrators of indus- 
trial schools to determine what can be contributed 
toward providing the training which is needed. 
Letters to military authorities in Washington will 
not bear so much fruit as a personal visit to a 
local recruiting station, camp, or cantonment for 
definite advice as to how schools may best serve. 
It is expected, however, that the National Board of 
Vocational Education will be helpful with sugges- 
tive material. 

At the present moment the most effective con- 
tact between the school that may give the training 
and the place that needs it can be brought about 
through cooperation either with cantonment author- 
ities or with local manufacturing plants. Industrial 
and technical schools in England in the early days 
of the war formed connections with government 
arsenals and began the manufacture of gauges for 
shell-making, mostly of the inspection type. At first 
the technical institutes were very difiident about 



INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 6l 

undertaking the work, the standard of skill re- 
quired being so high; but after a few appeals on 
the ground that it was a great opportunity for 
trade education to show its value, the institutions 
started the work, so that there are now something 
like a dozen such schools working on the manu- 
facture of these instruments. It is to be understood 
that the majority of the workers thus employed 
were metal workers before they took up this work. 
Others were manual-training teachers in the ele- 
mentary schools. They have turned out approxi- 
mately 50,000 inspection gauges, and it is the 
opinion in England that the trade institutes never 
undertook a better work. 

In general terms the shortage of help in the 
industries is going to be met by training opera- 
tives selected from unskilled workers; by training 
foremen of those operatives who will be selected 
from the skilled help; and by training highly 
skilled specialists who will be selected from the 
workmen already skilled. The training plan in 
the New England Westinghouse plant will be 
interesting in this connection. In this ammunition 
plant 80 per cent of the workers are listed as opera- 
tors, the majority of whom are trained from carefully 
selected unskilled labor. To train these operators 
skilled machinists are employed as instructors. One 



62 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

instructor is in charge of a group averaging about 
thirteen men. In other words, 7 J per cent of the 
force in the operating departments are on the 
instruction staff and known as foremen, Hnemen 
(set-up men), and instructors. Instruction is given 
incidentally in turning out the regular product. 
No equipment is set aside primarily for instruction 
purposes ; any equipment in the plant may be thus 
used. This method of instruction is called the 
group-instructor plan, in which one instructor or 
foreman has charge of teaching a group of opera- 
tors working on an assigned task. While under 
instruction the group is employed on regular 
production. The instructor is not required to pro- 
duce, but gives his entire time to group teaching. 
In the tool-making department, men of mechani- 
cal ability, not necessarily all-round machinists, but 
in some instances from other trades, are trained 
in making jigs and fixtures. In these cases the 
ratio of instructors to workers is less than one 
to thirteen, the helper plan being used. The 
helper plan is that in which a skilled worker is 
employed in special work, such as tool-making or 
gauge-making, and has under him from one to 
three helpers. In this case the man who gives the 
training does not confine his entire efforts to in- 
struction, but is required to work at his particular 



INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 63 

occupation. If satisfactory results are to be secured, 
only a very limited number of helpers can be 
assigned to one worker. 

The industrial schools will prove to be a small 
factor in training operatives, in view of the fact 
that industry itself is able to train them quickly 
and satisfactorily. It takes only a few days to 
make a Polish farm hand of Connecticut into an 
ammunition worker in Bridgeport. Foremen and 
specialists may be trained through evening and 
day part-time courses. Of course it is assumed 
that these schools will have equipment requisite 
for training in the kind of work for which help 
is needed. The Springfield (Massachusetts) Voca- 
tional School expects to shift some of its pupils 
from house to ship carpentry in view of the new 
demand for men with a knowledge of shipbuilding, 
— a demand which will extend, undoubtedly, over 
a term of years. 

At least, one way for a trade school to be of 
service and yet not purchase additional equipment 
is to lend its skilled instructors to a local manu- 
facturing plant where an organized plan for training 
foremen and specialists exists. This has been done 
by the Quincy (Massachusetts) Industrial School, 
which cooperates in furnishing part of the instruc- 
tion given in the Fore River shipbuilding plant. 



64 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

This company is giving instruction to a selected 
group of workers under pay for a full industrial 
day of ten hours. A night shift of training for 
eleven hours is also given to another group of 
men. Instructors are training an assigned group 
of operators on regular production and under usual 
employment conditions. Some part-time instruction 
in technical subjects, and in some cases on special 
operations, is also given to certain groups of selected 
workers while under employment in the plant. This 
plan has a significance worthy of attention after 
the war. 

General Manager Smith of this company, at a 
conference of state administrators of vocational 
schools held the middle of July in New York City, 
made an interesting statement as to the need of 
trained help in the shipyards. A summary of his 
remarks follows:^ 

For shipbuilding purposes men trained in the building 
trades offer little advantage over intelligent untrained men, 
as the character of work in the shipbuilding industry is so 
different from that in the building trades. 

However, industrial and trade schools can give prelimi- 
nary and thorough instruction to ship-fitters and loftsmen. 
The course for the latter should include ship-drafting. 

1 Taken from bulletin of the National Society for the Promotion of 
Industrial Education, for August, 1917, "War Demands for Industrial 
Training." 



INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 65 

More limited instruction can be given in other ironworkers' 
trades and in the shipwright trades. 

Trained instructors are needed. Instructors may be em- 
ployed in the plant and, if so, should have full power to 
instruct and should not be employed on production, as the 
best results in instruction can only be obtained by having 
the instructor concentrate his mind on his work. 

Shipbuilding in the United States has been one of our 
smaller industries. If the present crisis is to be adequately 
met, the industry will be one of our most important ones. 

Of the large amount of money to be spent in shipbuild- 
ing, practically one half will be expended on labor in the 
shipyard ; the remainder is for material purchased from out- 
side parties, but which at the works of such subcontractors 
is again largely labor. Of the labor expended in the ship- 
yard about one third is for ironworkers, and it is in this 
trade that the greatest shortage occurs, as there is only a 
small percentage of men for the ironworkers' trade now to 
be found in this country. 

In the past very little instruction in the specialized ship- 
building trades has been given in the United States, and 
the number of men who have served apprenticeship in these 
trades is small, a great supply of skilled men in these trades 
coming from Great Britain. There is an imperative need 
for a supply of men in the ironworkers' trade. 

Some instruction must always be given in the ship- 
building plant, but it is possible to give a great deal in 
the industrial schools, and, as the wages are good, men 
should be readily attracted to the shipbuilding trades. 

While ironworkers' trades consisting of loftsmen, ship- 
fitters, riveters, chippers, calkers, reamers, bolters, packers. 



66 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

and some others are peculiar to shipbuilding as well as 
the shipwright's trade, the trades of plumber, pipe fitter, 
coppersmith, etc. are very materially different in the ship- 
building trades from what they are in the building trades. 

On the other hand, it is possible to send instruc- 
tors from the factories to the school. In several 
instances in England the manufacturers supplied 
the schools vi^ith instructors and all the necessary 
material in order to teach women and boys the 
identical operations which they would be called 
upon to carry out in the factory. In this way a 
number of schools combining manufacturing with 
training were able to supply local factories with 
boys and women trained in the special operations 
involved. This plan is also significant and has 
an important bearing upon the administration of 
public vocational training. 

The question whether industrial schools should 
make ammunition or equipment pertaining to war 
service will come up. Having substantial amounts 
of available equipment, they will doubtless at times 
be tempted to use their organized day and evening 
classes for purposes of emergency productive work. 
In machine-shop schools, for example, the teachers 
being skilled machinists and the pupils capable 
of turning out a substantial amount of productive 
work, inducements to subordinate educational ends 



INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 67 

to those of an economic nature may be expected. 
It is therefore suggested that industrial-school 
authorities resolutely resist all attempts to subor- 
dinate their rightful purpose of giving industrial 
education. It is clear that a certain amount of 
production is necessary for purposes of education, 
but it is important that this should never be made a 
primary purpose in any industrial school. A letter 
from Director W. C. Smith of the Troy (New York) 
Central School illustrates the productive work of 
one school which retains educational value. 

A Troy corporation is engaged on a large contract with 
the government for uniforms. Its shops are taxed to the 
limit, and it has found it necessary to utilize every avail- 
able shop in town for making various machines used in 
cutting cloth for this contract. It has entered into an 
arrangement whereby our complete machine-shop equip- 
ment is turned over to its use under the supervision of 
our own instructor. Our graduate boys are employed in the 
shop and are now at work perfecting twelve machines for 
use in different parts of the country on this contract. 

The public vocational schools must face, sooner 
or later, the question of shop production on a 
commercial basis. They exist, primarily, to train 
producers and not to make products. Are the two 
inconsistent? Perhaps the war service of these 
schools will bring this debatable issue to a head. 



68 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

Obviously the industries engaged in the making 
of automobiles, aeroplanes, machinery, and ammuni- 
tion have for some time past absorbed the available 
supply of skilled help. With the emergency of 
war preparation upon us, we must find ways of 
pressing thousands of workers into lines of work 
with which they are almost altogether unfamiliar. 
Except with boys who are fourteen to sixteen years 
old, it will be of little avail to think of giving all- 
round trade training. The labor supply which we 
now need must be trained immediately and inten- 
sively. From what has already been stated it is 
clear that workers may be trained in three ways: 
first, in day industrial or technical schools; second, 
in industrial plants such as have been mentioned 
in the case of the Westinghouse Company; third, 
through part-time employment in industry, with part- 
time attendance in industrial or technical schools. 

The industrial-school authorities should send into 
the factories capable instructors who have had 
trade experience, in order to learn the needs for 
trained help and to analyze the trade processes for 
which men need to be trained. In this way the 
school may determine whether it can best meet the 
situation by training the youth in its day schools to 
go to work in industrial plants upon leaving school — 
although this is not a very immediate way of meeting 



INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 69 

the emergency — or whether it would be better to 
move the classes, so to speak, over to the plant 
and have the instructors teach a group of unskilled 
workers on the group-instruction plan. Perhaps 
the school could perform its best service by giving 
trade extension courses to those already engaged 
in productive work. Anyhow, these alternatives 
must be fully considered. 

These instructors or trained experts, when visit- 
ing typical yards or plants in a specific industry to 
learn of the needs for trained help, must be able to 
reanalyze the trade processes in terms of training 
as distinct from terms of production, and out of this 
analysis to draw up suitable schemes for giving 
such training. The question of whether this train- 
ing should be given entirely in the school or entirely 
in the plant or partly in the plant and partly in the 
school should be left to experts, who know best the 
possibilities of each of these schemes. 

This is no time for industrial schools to stand 
on their dignity and claim that they can do all 
that is necessary in their day schools without 
cooperation with those who employ. It is readily 
granted that, generally speaking, directors of in- 
dustrial schools know their job quite well when 
it comes to giving trade-preparatory training to 
youth before it enters industry; but at a time 



70 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

when the country needs thousands of workmen we 
are quite sure that the better plan for training 
operators and semiskilled workers is directly in the 
plant itself. In a time of great emergency this in- 
tensive, immediate training must be given in large 
part by the industries themselves within their own 
plants. They have the equipment, they have the 
men who need the training; all they lack is the 
proper instructing force, as they cannot take men 
away from production for instruction purposes. It 
follows that the instructors of our schools must give 
their instruction in the plants or must have the 
unskilled operatives and helpers come to the school 
for part-time work. 

The present all-day industrial schools, even in 
normal times, need this direct contact with industry 
to save themselves from shop methods which savor 
of manual-training schools. 

It is assumed that the regular all-day industrial 
and trade schools will continue. Of course they 
are now largely attended by comparatively young 
students, and it is quite likely that the enrollment 
will diminish, as there is an unusual demand for 
boys in every branch of industry and commerce. 
It will be increasingly difficult to hold such boys in 
school in the face of financial returns rather extraor- 
dinary when one considers their youth. 



INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 71 

In the interests of conservation of youth and the 
training of a suitable supply of skilled workers for 
the future, there should be no diminution of effort 
to develop and extend day-school work, even though 
the young people thus trained will be too young 
to contribute definitely to the present emergency, 
unless, of course, it should last more than a year 
or two. Nevertheless, the enrollments are likely to 
be less. A partial compensation for this situation 
is that groups of more mature workers coming 
from the industry itself on a part-time basis can be 
accommodated for special instruction, or groups of 
young men who are now elevator boys, messenger 
boys, clerks in stores, ofhce boys, can be induced, 
perhaps, to come to the all-day school, and through 
short, intensive courses be put into the way of earn- 
ing, in some factory making war supplies, a sum 
equal to from two to three times what they are now 
earning. No attempt should be made to hold such 
youths in the school beyond the period necessary to 
give them immediate and intensive training. 

After the war it will be an open question whether 
intensive courses should not be more generally 
adopted in our day industrial schools. 

Obviously the largest immediate service that can 
be rendered by industrial and trade schools will be 
through the readjustment and extension of evening 



72 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

and other off-time courses. As usual, the espe- 
cially important function will be the training of 
men already in the trades for more skilled tasks or 
for directive work. Ways must be found for extend- 
ing the evening-school facilities. One way is to 
operate the evening courses throughout the entire 
year. Most of our industrial schools operate only 
from October to April, but in this time of pressure 
they should be open continuously. The other way 
would be to carry on trade extension work not only 
in the evening but also early in the morning or late 
in the afternoon. These are technically known as 
off-time courses and came into existence originally 
in some cities which made provision for training 
workers from plants operating night shifts. 

Fundamentally, even in times of peace, there 
is no sound reason for ever completely closing a 
day industrial school. It might run during the 
summer as well as the winter; in the late after- 
noon and early morning as well as in the evening. 
In the middle of June, 191 7, President Wilson ad- 
dressed a letter to Secretary Redfield making the 
suggestion that the vocational-training schools of 
the country should be open during the summer, 
when it would be possible to train a large number 
of young men under military age, either to fill the 
places in our industries left by men who enlist 



INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 73 

or are withdrawn for military service, or to carry 
on special occupations called for by the war, such 
as inspectors of material and apparatus. In this 
connection, where the President speaks of " inspec- 
tors of material," it may be said that one of 
the prominent industrial-education experts of the 
East has been asked to train a group of men 
selected for special government inspection work. 
These men will then be responsible for organiz- 
ing a force of assistant inspectors in the plant to 
which they are assigned, and of supervising the 
work of the assistant inspector under their personal 
direction. 

The course of inspectorship training is made up of two 
units : one dealing with the business and accounting side of 
inspection and the other with the technical instruction which 
is given through participation in the actual work of inspection 
at the arsenal, observation of the manufacturing processes, 
and direct group instruction. 

The first unit is given at Washington and usually requires 
from four or five days to a week for its completion. The 
second unit is given at the Rock Island arsenal and covers 
eleven days as a minimum. Only the most experienced men, 
however, complete it in this length of time. The men enter 
the school at irregular intervals in groups of four or five at 
a time. The number in training at any one time varies 
from thirty-five to fifty. 

The men are moved from department to department on 
a fixed schedule. When a man completes his training he is 



74 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

assigned to a plant in accordance with his quahfications as 
indicated by his previous experience and his record at the 
school. Further plans for training the inspector after he has 
been assigned to the field have been proposed but have not 
yet been put into effect. Many of the candidates for this 
training are instructors in vocational training.^ 

The opportunity for promotion of skilled workers 
was never so great as at present, and the oppor- 
tunity for schools to train them will never be 
greater than at present. The schools may well 
organize intensive short courses in practical train- 
ing, as well as other courses designed to advance 
qualified workers to positions of directive work in 
the factories. 

While the part-time plan offers excellent oppor- 
tunities for advancing selected workers in order 
that they may acquire certain technical knowledge, 
it is doubtful whether much of this work during 
this emergency period can be done in the public or 
private industrial and trade schools. We all know 
that certain industrial concerns have established 
part-time schools in their plants. These classes in 
the works are especially adapted, in the present 
emergency, for training selected workers to be- 
come specialists and foremen. If the school is near 

1 " Vocational Education and Government Service," News-letter issued by 
National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education, October, 1917. 




War needs open new fields for schools. After the war, stereotyped courses 

in trade schools and technical institutes will have lost their hold. Dunwoody 

Institute (Minneapolis, Minnesota) is one of the few schools having a 

trainingr course for bakers 




An example of an effective adaptation to a national need. 
Institute meeting a shortage of army bakers 



Dunwoody 




Educational efficiency as measured by its response to a national need. Dun- 
woody Institute is one of the several institutes teaching radiography and 
power testing to navy men 



INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 75 

the plant, so that industrial workers can attend for 
part-time day instruction for a period of six or 
eight hours a week without loss of time or without 
interfering with production, it may be possible to 
develop some part-time courses in the schools, but, 
generally speaking, it would be better for the in- 
structors in these schools to go directly to the 
plants themselves and give this part-time instruction 
there. In another chapter mention will be made of 
a feasible part-time system and the necessity for 
some such system, but it refers only to boys and 
girls between fourteen and sixteen years old who 
belong primarily in school and not primarily at 
work. It is assumed that the group of which we 
have been thinking is the older group of workmen 
who wish to become foremen. 

Sir Robert Blair, in his report already referred 
to, speaks of the manner in which technical and 
trade schools in and about London train semi- 
skilled workers for munition work. 

At first we gathered together all the metal-working ap- 
paratus of our elementary schools and placed it in two of 
our technical institutes. Shafting was put up, power was 
installed and the lathes started, and they have been run- 
ning ever since July, 191 5, for twelve hours a day in three 
periods of four hours each. At first the period of training 
was for one period a day for six days a week for six weeks, 



76 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

or a total of 144 hours, but later, to meet the demands, the 
manufacturers took upon themselves the training of more 
highly skilled turners, of machine erectors, of milling- 
machine hands, and so on. We began to train women for 
tracing in drawing offices and subsequently for mechanical 
drawing. We trained lead-burners for employment in fac- 
tories making explosives. We trained gauge-makers for em- 
ployment in tool rooms of our shell factories (many of these 
men have been drawn from the jewelry and silversmithing 
trades). The more skill we gave the training, the longer it 
took to train these people, and so the number produced 
weekly has diminished, but in two years we have trained, 
certified, and placed 6000 workers. 

And again he speaks of other training apart from 
furnishing additional munition workers. 

One institution has done a great deal of work in train- 
ing in cold shoeing over 1000 men belonging to the Royal 
Field Artillery, Royal Engineers, and the Army Service 
Corps. The same institution has also been used for the 
reception, inspection, and dispatch of many of the horse- 
shoes required by the army. At another institution over 
3500 students have been trained for Red Cross duties, and a 
great work has been done in recruiting men for the skilled 
sections of the Royal Flying Corps. Besides we have trained 
men for tinsmithing, copper work, and wireless telegraphy. 
A third institution took on the general direction of the prep- 
aration of synthetic drugs in the chemical departments of the 
technical institutes, and the medical organization of the army 
was largely indebted to these chemical departments for the 
production of the much-needed drugs. 



INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS -j^ 

Assuming that administrators of industrial edu- 
cation are interested in the welfare of factory 
workers, — something often apart from instilling 
technical skill and knowledge, — it will be neces- 
sary for them to provide courses for men and 
especially for women workers, giving instruction 
in the laws of health with which every employee 
in factory life should be familiar. In England the 
memoranda of the British Health of Munition 
Workers Committee have demonstrated conclu- 
sively the great necessity of this teaching of 
hygiene : that the causes of ill health of workers in 
munitions factories were not alone the result of 
fatigue from long hours, but quite as much the 
result of insufficient or ill-prepared food, inadequate 
sleep and ill-ventilated sleeping quarters, and failure 
to appreciate the consequences of disregarding 
safety devices. 

It may not be amiss in this chapter to say a 
word about our government naval schools, for 
some may not be aware that the government has 
for a number of years been maintaining a very 
efficient system of trade education. The purpose 
of the naval trade schools is to train young men 
for various trades or occupations required on ship- 
board. In going over the list it is likely that 
administrators of industrial education will see an 



78 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

opportunity to connect the work of their schools 
with the work of the naval schools. In addition to 
the practical instruction given at the training sta- 
tions where these schools are located, a course of 
academic instruction is conducted throughout the 
naval service. This instruction does not stop at 
the training station, but continues on shipboard, 
and every encouragement is given for advancement. 
Electrical schools are located at the Brooklyn Navy 
Yard and at Mare Island, California. The course of 
instruction comprises machine-shop work, reciprocat- 
ing steam engines, steam-turbine engines, internal- 
combustion engines, magnetism and electricity, 
dynamos, motors, motor generators, alternating- 
current batteries, etc. Members of the radio class 
are trained in the duties of a radio operator and are 
given constant practice in the use of the mechanism 
employed in recovering and sending messages. 

The artificer school is located at the Norfolk 
Navy Yard, and is composed of classes for ship- 
wrights, ship-fitters, blacksmiths, and painters. 

The machinist and coppersmith schools are lo- 
cated at Charleston, South Carolina, and are open 
only to reenlisted men who have certain experience. 

The aeronautics school is located at Pensacola, 
Florida, and is divided into two courses : mechanics 
of aeronautics, and flying. 



INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE SCHOOLS 79 

Gasoline-engine instruction is given at Charles- 
town Navy Yard in connection with the machinist's 
school, preference being given to reenlisted men. 

Commissary schools for ships' cooks, bakers, and 
stewards are located at San Francisco and Newport. 

Musicians' schools are maintained at Norfolk, 
at Great Lake, Illinois, and at San Francisco. 

Seaman-gunner schools are located at the Wash- 
ington Navy Yard and at the torpedo station at 
Newport. 

All of these schools give short, intensive courses 
ranging from three to eighteen months in length. 
The students are paid wages, and all expenses are 
met the same as with other enlisted men. 

Seven free marine-engineering schools and thirty 
free navigation schools are being started on the 
Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific, and Great Lakes coasts to 
train men already having some experience for bet- 
ter places at advanced pay as engineers and deck 
officers in the new merchant fleet. The graduates 
are being placed as fast as they are graduated. 
The need for their services is expected to last for 
many years after peace is restored. 

For several years our industrial continuation 
schools have had as their motto " Earn and Learn." 
But the naval technical schools have shown a way 
whereby young men may both serve and learn. 



CHAPTER IV 

OUR COLLEGES AND TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 

It is to be hoped that if we can realize, as England 
did not, that education, to quote Arnold Bennett, 
" is the very last thing that we ought to economize 
in," we shall spare ourselves some of the unnecessary 
calamities of war. England, France, Italy, and the 
Central Powers have thrown into battle a very large 
percentage of their educated and trained men, in- 
cluding most of the young professors and instructors 
in their universities and colleges, gymnasiums, and 
lycees. Their colleges and universities are almost 
empty. The young men who would under normal 
conditions be receiving the education and training 
necessary to prepare them for leadership in the 
future development of these countries are fighting 
and dying in the trenches. 

In view of the fact that all of these countries 
must needs go through a long period of reconstruc- 
tion, industrial and otherwise, it is a pity that the 
sacrifice of its best youth had needlessly to be made. 
As a matter of fact, we see now that no university, 

college, or technical school that can possibly avoid it 

80 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 8i 

should permit its faculty or student body to be 
scattered or its energies dissipated. All concerned 
should redouble their energies and concentrate 
them upon those things which will be of the most 
service in the progress of the war and will prepare 
the students for the most effective service when 
the war is over. 

President Wilson, three months after the severing 
of relations with Germany, in response to a request 
for an opinion on the continuance of a college or a 
technical-school education during the war, wrote 
this letter : 

The question which you have brought to my attention is 
of the very greatest moment. It would, as you suggest, 
seriously impair American prospects of success in this war 
if the supply of highly trained men were unnecessarily 
diminished. There will be need for a larger number of 
persons expert in the various fields of applied science than 
ever before. Such persons will be needed both during the 
war and after its close. 

I have therefore no hesitation in urging colleges and 
technical schools to endeavor to maintain their courses as 
far as possible on the usual basis. There will be many 
young men from these institutions who will serve in the 
armed forces of the country. Those who fall below the age 
of selective conscription and who do not enlist may feel 
that by pursuing their courses with earnestness and diligence 
they also are preparing themselves for valuable service to 
the nation. 



82 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

I would particularly urge upon the young people who are 
leaving our high schools that as many of them as can do so 
avail themselves this year of the opportunities offered by 
the colleges and technical schools, to the end that the 
country may not lack an adequate supply of trained men 
and women. 

It must be said that while students were restless 
and anxious to perform a service, the college author- 
ities themselves adopted a very hopeless and helpless 
attitude toward the war in so far as it reacted on the 
internal economy of these institutions. Commence- 
ment exercises were abbreviated and shorn of their 
customary festivities. College presidents and execu- 
tive committees of alumni associations began to 
" talk poor " and to wax lugubrious over the small 
senior class of 1918. These men even wanted to 
drop athletics, which, to the facetious layman outside, 
constitutes the main reason for a college's existence. 
The general action of the colleges in this matter of 
abandoning so many athletic and other activities 
drew from President Wilson a letter deprecating 
such action and advising that the colleges main- 
tain all their usual sports if they did not detract in 
any way from the military purpose of the nation. 
In an address at Princeton University, Major 
General Wood deplored hasty action of students in 
enlisting for service in the army and navy, urging 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 83 

them to complete their school work for the year, 
and that they mark time pending the carrying out 
of provisions of the selective-draft law. 

It is clear, on one hand, that many college author- 
ities, especially those of the older type, passed 
through a state of academic institutional hysteria, 
while, on the other hand, their student bodies trans- 
lated the emotions of the moment into a deep 
conviction by enlisting. 

At the same time the spirit of mobilization was 
present in many a university, college, and technical 
school. In the cultural college it was the individual 
who enlisted, as the institution was not of the type 
whose work directly and definitely counted for 
important war service. In the universities where 
courses are given in agriculture, in medicine, in 
technology, and in practical arts, the institution itself 
enlisted, in that it offered war-emergency courses. 

It is perhaps interesting at this point to see how 
response came from these two types of institutions. 
In the first instance it came from individuals in the 
college, which was no more than could be expected 
of classical colleges, which have for years laid 
emphasis on the benefits of individualistic training. 
In the second instance the vocational colleges, as 
they are sometimes disparagingly called, responded 
from the viewpoint of collectivism ; that is, the 



84 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

college as a whole, because of its service depart- 
ments, was able to offer to the state and to the 
nation a course of training of immediate military 
value to the country. 

But thoughtful people can never again speak 
disparagingly of any university or technical school. 
While the movies have been filled with the citi- 
zens of our democracy, and the cafes crowded with 
people to whom war was something apart from 
existence, and the white-light gayety of the streets 
has been apparently undimmed, the youth of our 
colleges — the best youth in the world — have en- 
listed in Plattsburgs, joined the Naval Reserves, 
taken up signal-corps work, entered the research 
laboratory, followed their instructors into the med- 
ical corps, joined a school of aeronautics, or donned 
overalls in the shipyards. 

Doctor Finley, Commissioner of Education of 
the state of New York, in an address delivered 
before the Illinois chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa, 
speaks of his visit to Oxford just before the war 
and of a visit to Cambridge, England, a few weeks 
after it had begun. At Oxford he found the calm 
of the cloister, with its memorials of poets, scholars, 
statesmen, princes, and soldiers, where there were 
ancient academic conventions that paid no heed 
to the passing customs of the world outside. Only 



COLLEGES ; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 85 

six weeks later at Cambridge — a Cambridge 
which had a month or six weeks before been as 
Oxford — the town was filled with men in khaki. 
In this charming address Doctor Finley speaks 
of a portrait of Samuel Butler which he saw at 
Cambridge, — a portrait of the man who described 
in his book " Erewhon " a land where criminals 
were treated as sick, and the sick as criminals; 
where there were " Colleges of Unreason," colleges 
in which students were promoted for excellence in 
vagueness and were plucked for insufficient trust 
in printed matter, colleges where the principal 
courses were those in hypothetics, colleges in 
which mediocrity was fostered, colleges whose 
graduates almost invariably suffered from atrophy 
of individual opinions. And Doctor Finley says 
that as he stood before this portrait, in a hall 
almost deserted, he thought of those students of 
courses which Butler had called " hypothetical " and 
" atrophying," who had gone forth to prove the 
valor of their cloistered and unpractical learning. 
The university which apparently had paid no 
heed to the passing customs of the world outside 
had now mobilized herself; and this has been true 
of the colleges and technical schools of our own 
country, — truly a mobilization of the spirit of sud- 
den forgetting of self-concerns for a selfless service. 



86 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

The college of individualism, as has already 
been suggested, mobilized through its individuals, 
while the college of service mobilized itself. In 
the spring of 191 7 I happened to be in a West- 
ern university. The campus was practically de- 
serted. Instructors in foreign languages had joined 
the government interpreters' service; some of the 
professors of science had gone to government re- 
search laboratories, while a chosen few were off 
in some secret place working under government 
direction in scientific research concerning subma- 
rine warfare. The older students had enlisted, and 
the younger ones were marching in squads on 
the athletic field. Truly a mobilization, but largely 
individualistic. 

I came East to another college where more 
than 2000 students were devoting their time to 
a series of special short courses dealing with the 
various problems of an educational, social, and 
practical nature which the war had thrust upon the 
country. In this way the institution — Teachers 
College, Columbia University — had mobilized itself. 
Special arrangements had been made by the col- 
lege authorities whereby all but a very few students 
could participate in these emergency courses with- 
out seriously deranging their regular courses. 

In general, the aim of these emergency courses 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 87 

was not merely to meet those conditions which 
exist at or near the battle line but to help in the 
solution of the hundred and one urgent problems 
which must be solved by that great majority of 
teachers and social workers whose service will 
of necessity be given in home communities. Ac- 
cordingly, courses on social relief were offered, and 
among others the following topics were considered : 
" Administration of relief in time of war and emer- 
gency," " Care of orphaned and neglected children." 
Under the organization of rural communities were 
discussed " Conserving the food supply," " The 
health problem of the rural community," and " The 
organization of school pupils for agricultural serv- 
ice." The matter of social service in military 
camps was thoroughly gone into and reports and lec- 
tures were given by men who had actually worked 
with the soldiers themselves. The Boy Scout and 
Camp Fire Girl movements were also discussed in 
special courses, and the practical questions of the 
amateur gardener were carefully considered. 

In the School of Practical Arts special attention 
was given to the making of children's garments, 
the sewing of Red Cross material, and the reno- 
vating of millinery and clothing. In addition to 
lectures on thrift in food the department of cook- 
ery gave a course on emergency cookery for men, 



88 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

which was especially designed for army cooks and 
Boy Scout leaders. There was also a series of lec- 
tures and demonstrations by a government expert 
on the preservation of food, including canning and 
drying. Other courses considered the essentials of 
diet planning and of how to buy in large quantities 
for camps and hospitals. The departments of chem- 
istry and biology gave special instruction in the 
analysis of water and of milk, and in the tech- 
nique of diagnostic bacteriology. The fine-arts 
department made some rather unique contribu- 
tions, including a study of protective coloring with 
reference to camouflage for military purposes, the 
designing of posters, and topographical sketching. 
There was a course on tin-can work for home 
and camp, in which, from discarded tomato cans 
and powder boxes, were produced all sorts of 
useful things — coffee pots, camp stoves, hot-water 
bottles, lanterns, and candlesticks. A special course 
in photography for hospital and field work was 
offered. In the modeling class the manipulation of 
plaster of Paris was demonstrated for nurses and 
Red Cross students, to be used in connection with 
occupational work for convalescent soldiers. An 
extremely interesting series of projects in plastic 
material was worked up, particularly some clay 
models of trenches and dugouts. 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 89 

Another course which attracted some hundred 
and fifty students was the emergency instruction 
given by the physics department in automobile 
mechanics. The object of the instruction was to 
equip the average student with a stock of general 
information that would enable him to operate a 
car, to make minor repairs, and to diagnose 
trouble intelligently. Some of the matters dis- 
cussed were the four-cycle engine, carburetion, 
transmission and differential, and the storage 
battery. For experiment and demonstration pur- 
poses the laboratory was supplied, among other 
apparatus, with a detachable boat motor and two 
automobiles. The latter were thoroughly dissected 
and then reassembled from spark plug to tires, and 
in every possible way the mechanism was examined 
and experimented with. 

The departments of nursing and health and of 
physical education offered some ten courses in 
all, including home nursing and emergencies, sur- 
gical dressings, care of children, public-health prob- 
lems, first aid, medical gymnastics, and invalid 
occupations. 

The department of music offered three courses 
designed especially to prepare students to lead 
music appropriate to patriotic meetings and to 
present selections at hospitals and camps. 



90 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

Two courses were offered by the department 
of speech: one planned for those intending to do 
emergency speaking and lecturing, and the other 
arranged to meet the demand for entertainment 
for little children, the sick, and soldiers during 
the war. 

In addition to these technical courses there was 
a series of lectures on economic problems con- 
tributed by various Columbia experts, and another 
series of special lectures by such speakers as 
Mr. Joseph McCabe, the noted English author, 
and Mr. Frederick C. Wolcott, director of the 
Polish War Relief Commission. Finally, there 
was a wonderful and never-to-be-forgotten address 
by Ignace Paderewski, in which he reviewed the 
long and troubled story of his native land and in 
impassioned words pleaded for the restoration of 
Poland's ancient liberties. 

It may be said without exaggeration that in all 
some millions of people throughout the United 
States will, directly and indirectly, profit by this 
emergency instruction at Teachers College, for the 
students who attended are for the most part ex- 
perienced teachers, who, in their turn, will organize 
and instruct their home communities in similar 
preparedness courses. 

At the same time another university, unique in 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 91 

its way, — the University of the State of New 
York, — was holding, through its Board of Regents, 
a meeting to determine academic standards of the 
schools and colleges of the state in a war crisis. 
This university was modeled upon the University 
of France, the constituent units of which have 
proved themselves wonderful instruments in the 
waging of war. The universities represented have 
organized themselves into a civil army, preventing 
the wastes of duplication, misdirected endeavor, 
and isolation so common everywhere. 

In the building where the Board of Regents met, 
two conferences were being held, one representing 
the schools and colleges of the state, the other rep- 
resenting the agricultural and industrial interests. 
In one place men were discussing how the aca- 
demic status of professional schools and colleges 
might be maintained, and in another room men 
and women were participating in a discussion of 
public markets, food conservation, services of agri- 
cultural teachers, the taking of an agricultural cen- 
sus, the releasing of boys from school, the organizing 
of canning clubs, and all those affairs of the state 
and its schools which might contribute to the 
nation's welfare. These two meetings offered a 
picture of two lines of work which must always 
go together in time of war. 



92 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

As Commissioner Claxton has said : 

Students should be made to understand that it is their 
duty to give to their country and to the world the best and 
fullest possible measure of service, for both country and 
world will need more than they will get of that high type 
of service which only men and women of the best educa- 
tion and training can give. Patriotism and desire to serve 
humanity may require of these young men and women 
the exercise of that very high type of self-restraint which 
will keep them to their tasks of preparation until the time 
comes when they can render service which cannot be rendered 
by others. 

On the other hand, these same colleges and 
schools must contribute out of themselves that 
important vocational service so necessary in time 
of war, and the gathering at this meeting of agri- 
cultural and household-arts teachers, of farm-bureau 
men and county agents, of representatives from 
granges and women's clubs, of bankers, and of 
publicists was after all typical of the other half of 
the university or school contribution. 

At this meeting of the Regents the following 
resolutions were adopted on the recommendation 
of the administrators of schools and colleges who 
were in conference with the Regents. These reso- 
lutions are given in full because they express sig- 
nificantly the point of view of the 36 colleges and 
964 secondary schools in New York State. 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 93 

1. Realizing that one of the most urgent needs of the 
country in the present crisis will be the training of officers 
for military service, and that it is the peculiar duty of colleges 
and universities to contribute in supplying this need, we 
recommend that the several colleges and universities in the 
state establish one or more units of the Reserve Officers 
Training Corps, as provided in general order No. 49, in- 
cluding courses leading at the same time to a commission 
and to a college degree. 

2. In order that the extraordinary burdens and sacrifices 
of war may be shared in just proportion by all the nation, 
and that the calamitous experiences of the past under the 
voluntary system may be avoided, it is our judgment that 
in the raising of the necessary military forces the principle 
of universal obligation to service be applied by a process of 
selective conscription. 

3. That members in good standing of the graduating 
classes of the professional schools of the state who shall 
have been accepted for military service by the government 
be granted their degrees without special examination. 

4. That members in good standing of the graduating 
classes in the undergraduate departments of the colleges 
and universities of the state who would normally be gradu- 
ated in June, 19 17, and who shall be accepted for military 
service by the government should be granted their degrees 
without special examination. 

5. That members of the graduating classes in the high 
schools of the state who would normally be graduated in June, 
19 1 7, and who have been accepted for military service shall 
be granted their diplomas, and that the colleges of the state be 
requested to honor these diplomas for purposes of admission. 



94 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

6. That college students in good standing pursuing 
medical preparatory courses who enlist or are called into 
military service before the completion of the college year be 
granted certificates of completion of their year without 
examination. 

7. That absence from college or high school by reason 
of enlistment in military service shall not prejudice the 
award or the retention of university scholarships. 

8. That while the immediate service which women may 
perform in connection with the war will be in medicine or 
nursing and other work for general public welfare, and that 
while the greatest service for which they may eventually 
be called will be the supplying of positions vacated by the 
enlisted men, we recommend to the United States govern- 
ment the appointment by the Council for National Defense 
of a commission which shall outline an appropriate policy 
for women students in our colleges, with respect both to 
their college studies and to their enlistment for national 
service. 

9. That this board approve the plans of the National 
Research Council and proffer our hearty cooperation. 

10. That students in colleges and universities of the 
state who are liable for military training under the military- 
training law be exempt from the training prescribed by the 
Military Training Commission if they pursue courses in mili- 
tary training under approved instruction at their respective 
institutions. 

Further, that as there are numerous resources in both 
the elementary and the secondary schools of the state which 
can be used to advantage at this time, — among the most 
important of which resources are the use of high-school 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 95 

pupils for the farms and for necessary clerical and other 
work that can be done by pupils who remain in school, the 
use of teachers for summer work, the services possible 
through industrial and household-arts departments, and the 
enlistment of upper-grade children for home gardens, — 
the board adopts the following resolutions : 

1. That the State Agricultural Department in conjunc- 
tion with the State Education Department formulate a plan 
for enlisting and placing high-school boys upon the farms, 
for directing and supervising the work of such boys, for 
determining qualifications as to age and fitness, for deter- 
mining compensation and school credit, and for the adjust- 
ment of any other problems connected with the safeguarding 
of these boys who enlist for farm service. 

2. That the State Education Department secure through 
the necessary sources a statement of the needs that might 
be met through the industrial and household-arts depart- 
ments and other resources of the schools herein stated, and 
transmit such a statement to the schools of the state, to 
the end that these resources may be used intelligently and 
through regularly constituted channels. 

3. That the State Education Department consider the 
practicability of securing some provision by which during the 
summer vacation and at other times of the year boys 1 2 years 
of age or over may be employed if a certificate of proper 
working conditions can be furnished. 

It is impracticable to outline even briefly all that 
the various colleges and institutes have contributed 
to war service. The Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology is hardly mentioned in what follows, 



96 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

and yet it is conducting a score of activities of 
immediate emergency value. Drexel Institute has 
contributed not only courses but also its president, 
Doctor Godfrey, who is serving as a member of 
the National Council of Defense in special charge 
of war needs as met by education and science. 

To name all the institutions which are serving in 
one way or another is to call the roll of nearly every 
college and technical institution in the country. 
To give here a brief account of what a few are doing 
will show the range of the activities and the nature 
of the service. 

Early in May Columbia University inaugurated 
a series of emergency courses of a military, naval, 
and general nature arranged for the purpose of 
training students who desire to serve the national 
government in time of war. They were classified 
as intensive courses and were opened without 
restriction to all those who desired to be trained in 
any of the various subjects offered. These courses 
included military map making, field-service regula- 
tions, general telegraphy, radio telegraphy, camp 
sanitation, map reading and map interpretation, prac- 
tical navigation, and electrical devices of the navy. 

Harvard University has many achievements to her 
credit, for example: advanced training for selected 
officers under the leadership of six French officers ; 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 97 

a cadet school for ensigns ; a naval school for wire- 
less operators ; a course in orthopedic surgery ; 
the furnishing of the medical personnel for four 
base hospital units ; and war service by depart- 
ments of dentistry, medicine, psychology, and for- 
eign languages. 

Iowa State College gave a six weeks' course 
in special military and military-engineering work. 
Regular two-year noncollegiate courses were offered 
electrical workers and stationary engineers, me- 
chanical draftsmen and mechanics, structural drafts- 
men and building superintendents, surveyors and 
road makers. 

At Cornell University all professors and instruc- 
tors in the marine-engineering department and all 
the senior students of marine engineering were 
in either private or public shipyards on or before 
graduation day. 

The University of Wisconsin, anticipating that 
a large number of persons who had been trained in 
the administration of stores would soon be needed 
in the civil section of the Quartermaster's Depart- 
ment, in the Ordnance Bureau of the War Depart- 
ment, and in the Quartermaster's Officers' Reserve 
Corps, decided to aid in training for these services 
by offering special courses in the classification 
and handling of stores for those departments. 



98 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

This university also planned a summer session 
with courses in wireless telegraphy, first aid to the 
injured, Boy Scout movement in theory and prac- 
tice, and gave a course of war lectures especially 
designed for teachers, and a course for Red Cross 
volunteers who wished to take part in civilian relief 
work. This last course was in cooperation with the 
Red Cross organization, which, as explained in an- 
other chapter, will have much to do with relieving 
families deprived of their natural heads. The men 
and women in this course studied the basis of 
family life, psychological and economic principles 
underlying bodily health, the resources of the state 
to preserve the family group, and methods of social 
service and friendly visiting. 

Aviation schools for training candidates for the 
aviation corps were established at the University 
of California, Cornell University, Georgia Institute 
of Technology, University of Illinois, Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, 
Princeton, and the University of Texas. The first 
navy aeronautic school has also been established re- 
cently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

The College of the City of New York offered 
an emergency war course in bookkeeping and office 
practice to help fit men and women to fill the 
positions made necessary by the increased work 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 99 

of the national government, and to train people 
to take the places of those who responded to the 
call to arms. It also offered its regular winter 
courses during the summer in order to speed up the 
graduation of young men already enrolled in the 
college who might be drafted. 

This college also placed in every armory and 
military headquarters in Greater New York a 
teacher of conversational French. This work was 
very popular and highly successful. 

The University of Kentucky offered to women 
and civilians two special courses in its College of 
Electrical Engineering: a course in automobile en- 
gineering especially designed to teach women how 
to drive and take care of motor ambulances, and 
a course in wireless telegraphy. 

The Pennsylvania State College offered a six 
weeks' course in storekeeping under the direction 
of the Quartermaster's Department. 

In Massachusetts, through the extension de- 
partment of the State Board of Education, lessons 
were given in conversational French in the armories 
and encampments. In one armory as many as 
five instructors were engaged in this service. The 
vocabulary of the soldier being quite unlike the 
French dictionary, the military terms and expres- 
sions actually used were emphasized. Necessary 



lOO OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

French slang and words used commonly for dis- 
tances, rations, arms and equipment, money, meas- 
ures, and military orders were dwelt upon. Spoken 
French for doctors and nurses who are going to 
the front has been given in cooperation with the 
Metropolitan Chapter of the American Red Cross. 

A six months' course in wireless telegraphy for 
women was offered at Hunter College, New York 
City, the course of training being in three divisions: 
laboratory work, technical work, and the use of code. 
This course was given with the expectation not 
that women wireless operators will be placed on 
ships of war or on transports, but rather that they 
will be placed in land stations and on coastwise 
steamers, thus releasing men for more active serv- 
ice. It is understood that on the mechanical side 
the work is harder for the women, but that on the 
code work they are much quicker than men. 

The field for service of a college is not neces- 
sarily limited to extending the usefulness of its 
vocational departments to meet the war-emergency 
demands. As has already been noted, the depart- 
ment of French may give courses in conversational 
French in armories and in cantonments. Sir Robert 
Blair writes : 

We had this plan in England, and as volunteering grew 
to very considerable dimensions towards the close of 19 14 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES loi 

and there were tens of thousands of soldiers grouped within 
the near neighborhood of London, an arrangement was made 
with the war-office authorities for the teaching of French. 

Courses in mathematics applicable to war needs 
may be given. The college may send tutors to 
cantonments to give instruction to undergraduates 
who have not completed their college work and 
who would like to receive a college diploma. Col- 
leges can cooperate with the Y.M.C.A., to which 
has been given the privilege of looking after the 
recreational features in cantonments. American 
college boys and others will not be satisfied with 
formal military training. They will want health 
talks, entertaining and educational lectures, and 
instruction as to many things helpful in civil as 
well as in military life. 

There is a large opportunity, in a field as yet 
hardly touched, for departments of psychology in 
universities to help in selecting men for different 
branches of war service and to give vocational 
guidance to men who leave the service unfitted by 
war work to reenter their former occupations and 
perhaps untrained to enter a new service. A staff 
of psychologists is now at work in each of our 
cantonments applying intelligence ratings. 

There are two distinct uses for the ratings which 
are given the men as a result of the psychological 



I02 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

examinations. One of these uses is military and 
consists in furnishing a commanding officer with 
the rating of each man in his command, by which 
he may, if he chooses, be guided in selecting men 
for promotion, or for special duties requiring more 
than average intelligence and mental quickness. 
The other use is medical and is the thing specifi- 
cally sought — to find men who are so markedly 
below the average in intelligence as to demand 
consideration for discharge or for assignment to 
simple manual work under careful supervision. 

The general method of the test is as follows: 
The men of each company are divided into 4 
groups of 75 to 80 each. Each group is first given 
a simple literacy test which takes about five minutes 
and shows only which of the men can read and 
write. The illiterates are withdrawn at this point to 
be given examinations for manual skill. All those 
who can read are then given the " group-intelligence 
examination." 

Those who do not get good ratings are now re- 
examined in a group to discover whether they are 
merely slow or are of low-grade intelligence. If 
any fail to make a satisfactory showing, they are 
grouped with the illiterates who were separated 
from the rest of the group after the preliminary 
examination. 



COLLEGES ; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 103 

All these — illiterates, and literates who have not 
done well in the group examination — are given 
tests for manual skill and ingenuity. These tests 
are such as putting together dissembled mechan- 
isms, etc. After further individual examination 
those who receive the poorest rating are likely to 
be considered for discharge or as suited only for 
manual work under supervision. 

Those who display special mental or manual 
ability are brought to the notice of their company 
commanders as men who may be given assign- 
ments for superior intelligence or skill. 

The aims of the entire psychological examina- 
tion are to measure native intelligence and ability, 
not schooling; to disclose what a man can do with 
his head and hands, not what he has learned from 
books; and to help the medical officers quickly to 
discover and sift out the extremely incompetent, 
and thus prevent the inefficiency and injustice re- 
sulting from putting men in places which they are 
not qualified to fill. 

Of course there is a tremendous opportunity for 
the college to help people understand the causes of 
war. This has already been referred to in the chapter 
on " War and Community Uses of our Schools." 

Colleges having teacher-training departments will 
have the opportunity of giving short courses to men 



I04 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

and women who will take the places of those who 
have gone to war. There is also a field for great 
service in discovering ways and means of improving 
our public-school systems through lessons drawn 
from the war. 

Every college and university has a large library, 
and this should be examined with a view to dis- 
covering its possible contribution to national de- 
fense in war time. Aside from their functions of 
supplying fresh news and judgments of current 
events, libraries surely have a vital part in that 
work of organized research which is behind Ger- 
many's scientific and industrial efficiency. Success- 
ful research rests as much upon adequate and 
well-organized book resources as upon laboratories 
and trained men. The plain and immediate duty 
of a college situated near a cantonment, or having 
a portion of its student body enlisted in a camp, 
would seem to be to build up a military library 
adequate as a center of military information for 
those who are studying new methods and instru- 
ments of attack and defense. Such a library 
would be a technical library assisting the large 
number of specialized schools and fields of train- 
ing for officers and men in every branch of the 
service and even in different duties in the same 
branch. Medical libraries of colleges should be 



OUR COLLEGES 105 

available, with new and important material on mili- 
tary hygiene, medicine, sanitation, and surgery, and 
this material should be given the widest publicity 
with reference to its usefulness for the military, 
medical, and hospital corps. 

The college library might well lend to a canton- 
ment a member of its library staff for the develop- 
ment of not only a technical library but also a 
general reading library for those soldiers who desire 
only general reading. 

The geological department of a college can help 
in deciding on foundation conditions for army- 
work constructions, on the location of camp sites 
with reference to topography, drainage, and water 
supply, and on the location of trenches with refer- 
ence to dryness, underdrainage, and rock deposits. 
Such a department can participate in the study of 
earth vibrations in connection with heavy artillery 
discharges for the accurate determination of the 
distances of enemy batteries. It can also help the 
government in giving more exact training to young 
men in the interpretation of geological and topo- 
graphical maps. 

It is obvious that the technical college and the 
technical institute may render the greatest govern- 
ment service through its faculty and student body. 
Armour Institute of Chicago has a large number 



lo6 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

of its graduates and older students in concerns 
which are producing munition supplies and war- 
ships. Many have entered the signal service, and 
a large class in marine engineering has been spe- 
cifically organized to prepare men for service with 
the government. 

Wentworth Institute in Boston, under the direc- 
tion of Principal Arthur L. Williston, has been 
giving instruction in various branches of military 
engineering to the First Regiment of Engineers 
of the Fifth District, U. S. A. This regiment was 
originally an infantry regiment, but the men vol- 
untarily elected to train themselves to become an 
engineering regiment. The commissioned officers 
and non-commissioned officers and all the enlisted 
men gave three nights a week to the work for 
several months. In addition some sixty of the men 
in the regiment voluntarily resigned from business 
positions in order to devote eight to ten hours a 
day, six days in the week, to the work. This insti- 
tute instilled what Mr. Williston calls "mechanical 
gumption " into the enlisted men through short 
unit courses in mapping and surveying, topographi- 
cal sketching, and map reading ; gasoline-engine 
operation, repairing, and maintenance ; portable 
steam-power plant construction and operation ; 
electrical-power plant operation; field telephony; 



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Technical colleges and institutes believe that education is the very last 

thing in which they ought to economize. Illustrations of class work in 

national-emergency courses for the army and navy given by Pratt Institute, 

Brooklyn, New York 



DAVC AMERICA'S 
DU I O INDUSTRIES 



NEEDYOU 




BMUIOm 



A poster which accomphshed its purpose. War time, even more than 
normal times, requires an educational appeal to the work impulses of youth 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 107 

electric-line construction and maintenance ; timber 
construction, including pontoons, timber trusses, tim- 
ber suspension-bridge construction, machine-gun 
shelters, dugouts, and dugout tunneling and fram- 
ing; strength of materials; concrete construction, 
including culverts, bridge abutments, gun-carriage 
and engine foundations; acetylene welding and 
demolition work; thermite welding and emergency- 
repair ; machinery erection and alignment ; forging, 
hardening, and tempering ; hydraulics and drainage, 
especially trench drainage ; and rigging. The time 
was too short to give any elaborate theoretical 
training. The instruction was given through brief 
and intensive courses in a very practical way. In 
many instances it showed men who had practical 
experience and ability how to adapt their particular 
kind of skill to the special needs of the given 
service. Many of these men already had skill, but 
they needed to have it adapted to military ends. 

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, has been 
conducting 8 evening classes in machine-shop prac- 
tice, 6 classes in machine-drafting design, i evening 
class in elementary ship drafting, and day courses 
for a large body of enlisted men from the navy 
electrical school and from the signal reserve corps. 
Those who come from the signal reserve corps are 
being trained for active service in telegraphy, the 



io8 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

institute furnishing the technical instruction in ele- 
mentary and applied electricity, and army officers 
furnishing the military and field-service instruction. 
A mess for the men of this corps is conducted at 
the school of household science connected with 
the institute, and here details of men are trained 
for this work through a course in army cooking. 
The men from the electrical school are quartered 
at the navy yard, and spend five and one-half 
hours a day at the institute taking courses in 
machine-shop operation, steam-engine practice, ele- 
mentary electricity, armature- and field-coil repair 
work on electrical machines, elementary chemistry, 
and batteries. It is interesting to note that Pratt 
Institute made a special effort to hold intact its 
student body of the regular courses, on the theory 
that the thoroughly trained mechanic or technician 
in service is many times more valuable to the 
nation than a private in the ranks. As a result of 
this effort, very few of the students of the day 
school dropped from the regular courses. 

The William Hood Dunwoody Institute of Min- 
neapolis began immediately on the severance of 
relations with Germany to serve as a recruiting 
station for the United States Engineers' Enlisted 
Reserve Corps, the United States Signal Enlisted 
Reserve Corps, the United States Quartermaster's 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 109 

Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States Civil 
Service Commission, and the United States Navy. 

It also outlined a scheme for taking a census of 
mechanics and technicians for the state of Minne- 
sota, which is now being carried out, and on the 
basis of which recruiting will go forward for every 
branch of the government service. 

It made arrangements for bringing to Minne- 
apolis, on the first of August, 425 recruits from 
the Great Lakes Naval Training Station at Chi- 
cago, and distributed them among the following 
classes in training at the institute : general electri- 
cians, radio electricians, carpenter's mates, machine- 
shop operators, gas-engine operators, blacksmiths, 
coppersmiths, cooks, and bakers. 

The institute is training more than 200 novices 
in day and evening classes in telegraphy. Of these 
about 60 per cent are girls and women, this course 
being offered in response to a direct request from 
railroad and telegraph lines in the vicinity of Min- 
neapolis. It is also giving some instruction in 
operating-foremanship work for a prominent local 
steel and rhachinery company, as this company has 
renewed the manufacture of munitions and needs 
operation foremen. The institute was called upon to 
select the most promising men and to train them in 
one process of which they are later to have charge 



no OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

in the shop. Director Charles A. Prosser in making 
a report to the secretary of the National Society 
for the Promotion of Industrial Education said: 

We have 154 people taking radio work in day and eve- 
ning classes. This group is made up of a number of different 
types. First, there are the amateurs with licenses who have 
enlisted in our first radio company of the United States 
Signal Service and have gone into that class to improve 
their speed. Second, there are other young men who have 
gone in to learn the work so as to be recruited into another 
radio company of the United States Signal Corps or into 
the naval service, and there are, in the third place, young 
men who have gone in with the idea of offering their serv- 
ices to the Marconi Company, either for land work or for 
duty on board the merchant ships which are being built. 

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 mechanics and 
technicians have been sent into different branches of the 
government service by Dunwoody Institute. This number 
is made up in part of our own students from our school — 
particularly from the evening classes, although some of our 
day boys have gone — and in part of mechanics and techni- 
cians throughout Minnesota who have gone into the service 
through Dunwoody Institute, where we conduct a recruiting 
station and where we are recruiting into the service every 
Wednesday, applications being taken in the interim. 

We have sent into the service i motor-truck company ; 
2 others are in process of organization. We are sending out 
I radio company, which is ready to go, and are about to 
organize another. We are also organizing i wire company, 
I baking company, and i company of cooks. In addition 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES iii 

we have sent men to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and are send- 
ing men to the Puget Sound Navy Yard. We have also 
put men in touch with the Civil Service Commission and 
sent them into the service in this way. 

The response of these and other colleges and 
technical institutes justifies as nothing else could 
their past claims that they train not only for the 
spirit of service but for the life of service. 

The effect of the war on the college curriculum 
cannot be hastily measured. Institutions of col- 
legiate grade are slow to make radical changes in 
the requirements for the bachelor's degree. Some 
have already shortened the college course to three 
years. Others have decided as a war measure that 
students ought to be through college by the time 
they reach conscription age. Some are offering 
opportunity for all-the-year-round work. Others 
are allowing war service to count toward a col- 
lege degree. The English universities are already 
thinking of strengthening their courses in science 
and laboratory research, of giving more attention 
to modern languages, and of developing vocational 
courses. 

Certainly in America there will be an immediate 
and greater demand for so-called "practical " subjects. 
It may be that one of the effects of the war will 
be the sharpening of the differentiation and an 



112 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

increase of competition between the idealistic and 
the practical groups of studies. This will be un- 
fortunate. There should be no sharpening of dif- 
ferences of opinion. They had much better be 
dulled. There is no real necessity for antagonism 
between the cultural and the vocational subjects. 
People only think there is a need for constant 
justification of the one against the other. Such 
thinking has become a habit of mind. 

The French have a way of saying that the cul- 
tural subjects are merely the moral conditions, the 
ethical history, and a judgment as to the ethical 
value of the world complex of vocational and eco- 
nomic life ; for this reason any conflict between cul- 
tural and vocational subjects is impossible, and the 
more vocational education is developed, the more 
will the cultural aspects be needed and the more 
highly developed will they become. The French 
point out that what we term cultural subjects 
developed in two civilizations which were very 
highly practical, vocational, and militaristic ; namely, 
Greece and Rome. They speak of the humanities 
as being essentially the abiding lessons of those 
civilizations which in vocational and military ef- 
ficiency stood much higher above their fellows 
than Germany stands in those respects above 
contemporary civilization to-day. 



COLLEGES; TECHNICAL INSTITUTES 113 

Vocational subjects are direct-service subjects 
always. By their very nature they respond imme- 
diately to an emergency. The cultural subjects 
are more indirect in their effect. They could not 
be otherwise. I often wish we could get into the 
habit of speaking of liberal subjects in the sense in 
which this term. was used in the older days of our 
colleges, when the term " liberal " implied that the 
subjects classed under this head were liberalizing; 
that is, they liberated, or set free, the minds, spirits, 
and bodies of men and women from prejudice, 
selfishness, tradition, passion, cruelty, and so on. 
I have never seen how one could elect culture, 
for it is always a by-product coming out of think- 
ing and living. To study the language of an 
ancient people and to learn nothing of their gov- 
ernment or ideals is useless. To study this gov- 
ernment and these ideals of an older civilization 
and to see no lessons for the world of to-day is 
almost valueless. To study the past in terms of 
problems of human society is liberalizing. 

New meanings of the realities of war are before 
us. New concepts of two great ideals of govern- 
ment confront us. New methods of making war 
more horrible strike our eyes with every news 
issue. New schemes for patching up human life 
that it may go forth again to battle or return to 



114 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

industrial warfares of peace are heralded every 
week. New societies for the relief of human suf- 
fering due to the war are chartered constantly. 
New alignments of political groups committed to 
reform are in the making. New groupings of 
nations not formerly allied stand before our eyes. 
New methods of combining activities of great 
corporate interests for government needs are pub- 
lished daily. New trade possibilities now latent are 
prophesied as being inevitable. New ideals and 
new ideas gathered in the trenches are appearing 
over battle lines for new governmental practices. 
New advances in the field of government control 
of prices startle us continually. 

Out of it all there looms up a new science of 
chemistry, improved methods of transportation in 
the air, a still greater standardization of making in- 
dustrial products, a new conception of government 
control of trade and industry, a system of govern- 
ment insurance for individuals and corporations, 
new concepts of legislative authority and action, 
and a score of other things all heading up into a 
new sense of nationalism, — and who knows but 
even a sense of internationalism ! 

Is it credible that education alone will remain 
unaffected by these world changes? 



CHAPTER V 

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR MANUAL AND 
HOUSEHOLD ARTS 

A new spirit of teaching practical arts is upon 
us. The aims, materials, and methods of instruc- 
tion in manual training, cooking, sewing, agricul- 
ture, and commercial branches are changing. They 
have been influenced by the vocational-education 
movement, and because of it practical arts in gen- 
eral education must justify themselves or else be 
put into the scrap heap. 

The development and organization of differenti- 
ated courses in industrial, agricultural, and house- 
hold and commercial arts adapted to junior and 
senior high schools — more particularly in connec- 
tion with the education of children from 12 to 
16 years of age — offers a new field of service to 
teachers of these subjects who, up to now, have 
been following methods unsuited either to the 
needs of vocational training or to the needs of 
general education. Already the set of wood and 
iron models taken from the Russian system of the 
early seventies has disappeared, and the sampler 

"5 



ii6 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

book in sewing has passed away. The era of the 
coat hanger and sleeve board in manual training 
and of the set of doll's clothes and models of 
undergarments is doomed, and the cooking outline 
which starts out with making cocoa in September 
and in the thirteenth lesson takes up the making 
of an angel cake will soon meet the fate of flower- 
pot holders, doll's aprons, and book agriculture. 

But there is a great field for the practical arts 
in general education, — a field which no scheme 
of vocational training can possibly occupy. Each 
has its place. Vocational training is fitting young 
persons for profitable employment in chosen voca- 
tions. Practical arts in general education consists 
of varied lines of activity taken from the fields of 
agriculture, commerce, industry, and the household 
and taught in the school for the purpose of devel- 
oping capacity to deal with concrete things and 
of arousing social and industrial interests in the 
workaday world. 

In the early years of the child's life practical- 
arts work has a strong motor and social value. 
In the middle years, say from 12 to 16, it has a 
social and vocational-guidance value. The chapter 
entitled "The Field for Industrial and Trade 
Schools" gives a number of suggestions as to 
the work which boys and, to some extent, girls 



MANUAL AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS 117 

may offer as their service contribution in time of 
war. However there are fewer than 100 industrial 
and trade schools in the country. The majority of 
our youth are taking some practical-arts work as 
a part of general education in either the ele- 
mentary or the secondary school, and surely these 
young people will want to do something in this 
emergency. And certainly the teachers of sewing, 
manual training, cooking, and agriculture will de- 
sire to do their part, not only because they can 
be of service at this time but also for the reason 
that through war-service work they will be able to 
improve upon the practical-arts work and make it 
conform to the new spirit. The whole spirit of the 
new methods is based upon getting away from 
individual models created out of the mind of a 
teacher and imposed upon an unsuspecting stu- 
dent body which follows a " course in models " in 
about the same way that it takes a course in 
arithmetic. 

The present scheme of teaching practical arts 
is based upon the project plan and not upon the 
model or exercise plan. It no longer depends 
upon the teacher's course of study founded on 
tool exercises or logical sequence of processes. 
It now comes out of a need which is as clear 
to the student as it should be to the teacher. 



Ii8 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

The progressive teacher of manual training starts 
out with such a project, for example, as a garage. 
This involves making a sketch, working up a bill 
of materials, finding out the cost of lumber, cement, 
and so on. It involves work in concrete, laying the 
floor timbers, putting up the sides, laying out the 
roof, setting in the window and door frames, put- 
ting on the tarred paper or shingles or galvanized 
iron, and painting and staining. 

The progressive teacher of domestic arts no 
longer thinks of catering merely to the personal 
decorative sense of young girls. She no longer 
has the girls spend the entire year making gradu- 
ation dresses, or dish towels, caps, and aprons. She 
thinks in terms of quantity and in terms of social 
service which the domestic-arts work may render. 
She discovers that a hospital needs towels, aprons, 
caps, and bed linen, or that the orphan asylum near 
the school is sorely in need of children's garments, 
and then she tells of this need to the girls in her 
charge and the latter take up the problem in the 
same way that the boys take up the problem of 
building a garage. Each girl works in conjunc- 
tion with others for a common purpose which all 
recognize as being worth while. 

Progressive teachers of cooking are realizing that 
the idea of 20 cooking units in a schoolroom, 



MANUAL AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS 119 

where little batches of 20 model biscuits are made 
and where at the close of the lesson each girl has 
one of these small eatables, is far behind the prac- 
tice of those manual-training teachers who are mak- 
ing drawing tables, benches, and looms, or laying 
concrete walks, building outdoor gymnasium appa- 
ratus, and so on. Some of the teachers have insisted 
on having a flat or tenement or entire house near 
the school, where girls taking domestic science can 
go to learn to make real beds that are really slept 
upon, to clean bathroom bowls that are really used, 
to cook meals that are really eaten by people who 
pay for what they eat, to shake real rugs that be- 
come really dirty, and to shop at stores where they 
come in contact with actual commercial conditions 
and at the end of a week discover that it really costs 
money to run a real home. A few teachers, and in 
time there will be many, desire to go still further. 
They believe that homemaking cannot be taught 
without having some babies around, and so they 
have established day nurseries in connection with 
the homemaking classes. 

It is because of these things which have been 
mentioned in some detail that I was glad, as 
director of the Division of Agricultural and Indus- 
trial Education of the New York State Education 
Department, to send out a circular letter early in 



I20 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

April, 19 1 7, to our manual-training and household- 
arts teachers, in which I stated that every teacher 
of manual training, sewing, or cooking should be 
thinking in terms of mobilization service, and that 
any teacher of manual training who was conducting 
his course of models, instead of thinking and work- 
ing in terms of food production or industrial war 
service, was absolutely out of touch with the needs 
of the day. I advised him to turn his shop work 
over to home and community gardens, to increase 
the time allowance given to manual work, and 
help fill the cellar and pantry. I advised him to 
give his Saturdays and afternoons after school and 
even his vacation period to supervising garden 
work in the community. I said, furthermore, that 
any teacher of sewing who was not thinking in 
terms of Red Cross, and of mending, darning, and 
repairing, was as far away from the service idea 
as she possibly could be. I told her that with the 
increase in price of materials and with the scarcity 
of dress goods there would be necessary repairing 
and making over which would give her an oppor- 
tunity to do some real things. I even told her 
that she might drop some of her sewing and help 
the cooking teacher in organizing classes in pre- 
serving. I told the teachers of cooking that if 
they were running through their outlines with no 



MANUAL AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS 121 

reference to the food shortage of next winter and 
the year after, they showed a lack of compre- 
hension of the meaning of their jobs. I stated 
that the early summer and fall suggested lessons 
in preserving, while the winter season conveyed the 
idea of conserving. I asked whether they were 
planning to stop their work in June, before the 
canning season really began, and leave everything 
idle until school should open, when the canning 
season would be nearly over. I wondered what 
provision had been made in the community for 
using the summer service which they either had 
offered or, I hoped, were about to offer. 

A few weeks later word came from England of 
how the manual-training teachers had been urged 
by those in authority to do garden work. A portion 
of these directions follows : 

Surely wood and metal work have not the monoply of 
the educative value in manual operations. The harvesting 
of an orchard of fruit or a field of potatoes by a class of 
school children, accompanied by an enthusiastic teacher im- 
bued with the right ideal of his work, can be made to serve 
other purposes than merely that of simple mechanical utility. 
A discussion started at first hand between child and teacher 
on such matters as variety and quality of produce, the de- 
structive fruit pests and diseases encountered, the crating, 
packing, and distribution of produce, the weighing and 
measuring actually performed, the calculating of the value of 



122 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

produce and of labor, and a knowledge that the cooperative 
effort is in response to a call of England's need, would 
provide open-air lessons in nature study, geography, arith- 
metic, and civics quite as educative as any obtained in the 
elaborately equipped manual-training centers. 

This is true, especially the phrase "a knowl- 
edge that the cooperative effort is in response to 
a call of England's need," which embraces the 
socializing value of the manual-arts principles, — a 
value which we often talk about and as often fail 
to attain. 

Teachers of cooking, in this food crisis now upon 
us and the greater one which may come, ought to 
suspend temporarily some of their work in teach- 
ing children and turn their attention to teaching 
adults. To be sure the girl of to-day will be the 
mother of to-morrow, but the mother of the imme- 
diate to-morrow is also the mother of to-day, and 
the food crisis will be over, it is to be hoped, by 
the time the girls in our present cooking classes 
have grown into motherhood. These courses to 
adults should be intensive and in short units. 
The printing schools should print leaflets giving 
practical and helpful recipes to be distributed to 
the adults. If the women will not come to the 
school, then the schools should go to the women. 
By this it is meant that classes can be organized 



MANUAL AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS 123 

in churches, vacant stores, and settlements. In this 
connection it may be of interest to quote from 
the Leicester (England) education committee: 

Arrangements have been made in connection with the 
local food campaign whereby the ordinary schemes of work 
at the domestic-science centers have been temporarily sus- 
pended and special short courses in cookery instruction pro- 
vided instead. These courses have been designed primarily 
as a means of instructing as many women and older girls 
as possible in the method of preparing and cooking suitable 
substitutes for bread and potatoes. In addition to the rooms 
equipped for cookery instruction, those normally devoted to 
the teaching of laundering and housewifery are being used for 
this special work. The course is arranged to cover 4 lessons 
given on consecutive half days to each group of attendants, 
and at the conclusion of each course the women and girls 
attend one evening for a review lesson including a practical 
demonstration to which outsiders are invited. Leaflets have 
been prepared and sent to the schools for distribution. The 
children themselves write out the scale of rations as applied to 
individual families and take their copies home, thus becoming 
the active agents in the food campaign. 

In Albany, New York, the regular work in cook- 
ing was discontinued early in June for the school 
year of 191 7, and a special course of 10 lessons in 
food conservation was given at 4 domestic-science 
centers. The course consisted of i lesson in the 
preservation of eggs, 3 lessons on canning, i on 



124 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

making soap, i on butter substitutes, 2 on jellies 
and marmalades, and i on the drying of a number 
of agricultural products. 

Not only may the domestic-science teacher go 
to adults by the way of churches or settlements, 
but she may go directly, — in the rural districts, 
at least, — with demonstration kitchens mounted 
on automobiles. In Lindsay County, England, for 
example, a domestic-science lecturer arranged an 
experimental course of lectures and demonstrations 
on economical cookery, and equipped with neces- 
sary utensils a traveling kitchen at a cost of $100. 
She covered each of the larger villages in the area 
selected, spending one day in each place, the morn- 
ing being given over to traveling. In the after- 
noon, exhibitions of wheat-flour substitutes were 
arranged and demonstrations given that were based 
upon left-overs from her preceding evening's lesson. 
She also gave short talks on beekeeping, horticul- 
ture, fruit bottling, and so on. In the evening she 
gave a cooking demonstration. 

The "van" used by the women of Long Island, 
New York State, consisted of a train of cars be- 
hind a steam locomotive, from which demonstra- 
tions were given in fruit and vegetable preserving. 
The County of Nottingham, England, gave similar 
demonstrations and in addition gave lectures to 



MANUAL AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS 125 

mothers on the necessity of taking unusual precau- 
tions with reference to the health of babies at this 
period. It was customary in much of the work in 
England to have an agriculturist go with the 
teacher and give talks on spraying, elimination of 
pests, and conservation of garden products. 

One of the greatest services that the domestic- 
science teacher can render, whether she labors in 
rural or in urban fields, is the organization of can- 
ning clubs. The canning club enlists the services 
of women, girls, and even boys. It can be made 
as much of a social institution as corn husking and 
barn raising were formerly. But the teacher must, 
in most instances, move out of her domestic-science 
kitchen with its little gas stoves and quart sauce- 
pans. In the country district the equipment will 
be the stove in the village church, with a wash 
boiler, galvanized vat, washtub, or other vessel with 
a well-fitting top, which can easily be transformed 
into a home canner by making a false bottom with 
lifting handles. In a village or small city it may 
be necessary to beg, borrow, or buy the necessary 
cooking utensils, and to obtain free use of a vacant 
store, asking the local gas company to install, free 
of charge, some gas ranges. The boys will prepare 
the fruit; the women and girls will can it or dry 
it, as the case may be. To dispose of the product 



126 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

is a simple matter. It may be sold and the pro- 
ceeds divided. It may be taken to the homes and 
the expense of producing shared. 

In the city the domestic-science teacher serving 
as a leader of the canning club must watch closely 
the market and buy when the price is right, particu- 
larly when there is a surplus that may otherwise 
be wasted. It will be a new experience for many 
domestic-science teachers. It is a rather different 
proposition from canning a few baskets of straw- 
berries, cherries, or currants in a classroom. 

Naturally other containers than glass jars or tum- 
blers will have to be used. In fact, the canning 
club after one season of experimentation is likely 
to resemble, with its larger and more efficient 
equipment, a miniature canning factory. 

In Berkeley, California, the children of the entire 
city had a Jar Day, when they went out and col- 
lected every discarded and undesired jar. These 
were cleaned and sold and the money was turned 
into a " service fund." Many jars, also, were filled 
with surplus vegetable products to be used for the 
poor in the winter. 

Of course the old drying methods of grand- 
mother's days must be rejuvenated. Mr. Fred P. 
Reagle, supervisor of manual training in Montclair, 
discovered one of the old-fashioned evaporators and 



MANUAL AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS 127 

had a large number made up by the boys in his 
school and passed out to neighboring communities. 
Here is an old home industry which may be revived 
in the home or the community. 

Mr. Reagle, in describing his evaporator, writes: 

I was obliged to build something which could be used 
anywhere regardless of the availability of steam heat, elec- 
tric fans, or coal. Furthermore, it was necessary to con- 
struct from common stock material and to use some stock 
stove. I hit upon the idea of using a common laundry 
stove which could burn either wood or coal. I made 
20 frames, covered with galvanized wire, to hold the 
fruit. The control of the air circulation was obtained by 
means of an adjustable sliding door beneath the stove. 
The heated air passes around and over the stove and 
through the fresh food products, taking out the moisture 
and going out through the adjustable ventilator at the top. 
The evaporator has a capacity of from 5 to 8 bushels of 
fruit and vegetables a day. 

Another activity for domestic-science teachers of 
more experience will be in the training of cooks 
for the army, or, as the director of the School of 
Practical Arts (Teachers College) believes, "in the 
training of people to train cooks." 

The following quotation from a letter written 
by Sir Robert Blair of London to Superintendent 
Maxwell of New York City shows what was done 
in London : 



128 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

In the summer recess, 191 5, 264 of our domestic-science 
teachers volunteered part of their hoUdays in order to help in 
the work of training 2500 soldiers to cook and to meet the 
ordinary requirements in this line of the private in the field. 
The War Office drew men from different units from all over 
England and brought them to London in two great groups 
and paid 1/9 a day for the up-keep of the men. The 
soldiers were billeted in the school buildings and the prep- 
aration of their food formed the basis of the cookery in- 
struction. Each group was taken for a period of ten days. 
The War Office was most appreciative of the work done by 
these domestic-economy instructresses. The War Office did 
not ask us to repeat this the following summer, although it 
was repeated to some extent in other parts of England. 
The War Office, however, did ask us to lend them 30 care- 
fully selected teachers of cooking for the purpose of visiting 
army canteens and giving advice both on cooking and (what 
I believe is more important) on quantities used. 

Still another service can be rendered by the 
cooking teachers, especially in our large cities and 
in our industrial villages. This service consists in 
giving meals to children vv^ho are in want. Of 
course at the present moment we see little need 
for this work, but the pinch of poverty has come 
upon England, France, and Germany, and our 
own land may not always be one of plenty. When 
the need arises, teachers should be prepared to 
furnish lunches to the children and possibly even 
breakfasts, to say nothing about suppers. The 



MANUAL AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS 129 

dislocation of many ordinary trades and lines of 
business, the taking from the home of the family's 
means of support, the increased cost of food and 
provisions, and the prevalence of sickness due to 
neglect may necessitate the feeding of children in 
school. In London the list of children to whom 
meals were given daily increased rapidly from 
something like 32,000 in July, 1914, up to 75,000 
about the middle of September, 1914. Fortunately, 
however, as trade and industry became better ad- 
justed there was a steady decline in the number 
of children that were fed, so that in May, 191 7, 
there were only about 12,000 — the children then 
on the list being mainly the children of widows 
who were forced to go out to work. The number 
of meals provided per week in the schools of Eng- 
land in July, 191 5, was 200,000. In a year this 
number had dropped to 120,000. 

The drawing departments might well have their 
students design posters. Those designed by Ameri- 
can illustrators for the first Liberty Loan were 
surprisingly ineffective. Only one stood out — that 
with the reproduction of the Statue of Liberty 
with the accompanying symbol and direct wording. 
Our enlistment posters have been crude, lacking 
in psychological appeal as well as in design. It 
is questionable whether recruiting is aided by a 



I30 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

picture showing a naval officer lounging under a 
palm tree while in the distance a marine is seen 
standing amid bursting shells on a battleship. 
There has been and will be an opportunity for 
students to design posters for Red Cross work; 
for enlistment as farm cadets; for enrollment in a 
home-service unit for girls, in community canning 
clubs, in Boy Scout work, in school, home, and 
community gardening; for patriotic meetings and 
a score of other occasions. Good posters have an 
almost incalculable influence on civic life at any 
time. Within the last year there have been held in 
many cities various competitions in poster work of 
pupils with such subjects as " Red Cross," " Thrift," 
"Safety First," " Fire Prevention," " Pure Milk," and 
" Liberty Loan." 

There is plenty of work for the manual-training 
teacher. Mention has already been made of garden 
work, not so much in school gardens, however, as in 
community gardens, for, like the canning-club work, 
here is a splendid opportunity to bring adults and 
children together. In a number of small cities in 
the country where tillable land could be obtained, 
the manual-training teachers directed a community- 
garden project. The boys built the tool house; 
the Boy Scouts took turns in acting as watchmen ; 
plots were laid out on a family or individual basis; 



MANUAL AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS 131 

seed was purchased in bulk and distributed at cost ; 
experts, hired by the day, plowed and harrowed the 
ground ; stakes marking the plots were made in the 
school ; and the manual-training instructors, or, as 
they were termed, the garden directors, spent their 
summer vacation in a useful service. 

The manual-training teacher may help the Red 
Cross chapter in packing supplies into the boxes 
which his boys have made. He can be planning 
the hospital furniture which he may be called 
upon to make, as in France, where the boys 
built furniture for improvised hospitals and in- 
stalled electric lights. He can be thinking how 
he shall, if required, make hospital-bed racks, 
cots, tables, and simple reclining chairs. Perhaps 
he may have to supervise, as have the manual- 
training teachers in England, the making of hand- 
grenade bags, chaff bags, dummy cartridges for 
the training of troops, or sand bags. In a single 
secondary school in Bradford, England, more than 
1 200 articles — including splints, crutches, bed-boards 
and rests, screens, rollers, trays, etc. — have been 
made in the manual-training department in one 
year. Perhaps in the early spring latrines can be 
designed and built for the farm cadets, as was done 
in the Newton (Massachusetts) school, or shacks 
for troops, as was done at Plattsburg, New York, 



132 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

by the boys from the Stu)rvesant High School, 
New York City. The teacher may have his part 
to play in giving vocational training to maimed 
soldiers (see chapter on " Reeducation of the 
Disabled "), as all of the instructors in manual- 
training schools of the Dominion of Canada are 
now doing. 

A manual-training teacher in Nashville, Tennes- 
see, Mr. John M. Foster, has his boys make jig- 
saw puzzles, checkerboards, and bandage winders 
for the use of our soldiers in France. During the 
summer of 191 7 he organized a boys' auxiliary of 
the Red Cross, and the group made packing cases 
according to official specifications. The organiza- 
tion included a shop foreman, a timekeeper, and 
a stock man. Lumber and other materials were 
contributed by local dealers. 

Perhaps the manual-training instructor will coop- 
erate with the teacher of domestic science, as male 
strength is needed, in providing comforts for the 
soldiers, such as socks and mufflers made on knit- 
ting machines, and in helping with the packing 
and crating. In this connection there is another 
quotation on the work of London children : 

At the end of the first year of the war we began to 
organize efforts to provide clothing and other necessities 
for Belgian and Serbian children. In a few months the 



MANUAL AND HOUSEHOLD ARTS 133 

schools were able to furnish 10,000 complete kits made 
to the pattern and color and size supplied by the two 
embassies. It is reported that the making of these kits 
was one of the best exercises in planning, cutting, and sew- 
ing which the schools ever undertook, and probably nothing 
has done more to foster the school esprit de corps in the 
history of municipal schools since their origin, in 1870. 

In France a number of schools, when the build- 
ings were turned into hospitals, equipped either 
the entire hospital or a considerable number of 
beds at their own expense and by their own work. 
Hospital service was largely organized by these 
schools. One school would be responsible for the 
linen, another for mending, another for table serv- 
ice, another for cooking, and another for sending 
and receiving packages. A workroom established 
by the school girls in one of these hospitals had 
sent to the front in a year and a half 25,330 
packages. One little village school of only 30 
pupils in a short period collected 2542 eggs for 
the wounded soldiers and made socks and mufflers 
in addition. In another small district each of the 
schools specialized in some kind of work, one 
making up parcels for war prisoners, another knit- 
ting sailors' gloves, another making clothing for 
refugees, and still another providing candles for 
troops in trenches. 



134 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

A small country school in the Midlands of Eng- 
land, in addition to weekly contributions of vege- 
tables to the local hospital for wounded soldiers, 
has made 26 bed cradles and a dozen crutches, 
while the youngest boys have made splints. 

A report from a northeast-coast district of Eng- 
land mentions manual-training centers where bed 
tables, toilet tables, bed rests, and clinical-chart 
carriers are made for the local hospital. Even the 
girls have made splints and bed tables. Of course 
hundreds of sand bags have been made in the 
schools. 

The report closes with these significant words: 
" The effect of all this work has been most remark- 
able. Even districts where formerly little interest 
was taken by the children seem suddenly to realize 
the value of it all." This is what might have been 
expected, and what we in America may expect 
when we make our practical-arts work socializing, 
useful, and contributory to some great cause that 
the children see is worth while. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 

Since August, 1914, there have been presented 
to us new aspects of the relation of children to 
industry. Up to that time the only consideration 
for those who had the welfare of children at heart 
was the child himself; but with the war, the wel- 
fare of the child became tied up with the problem 
of the welfare of the country and its demands for 
service on the whole population. The endeavor to 
adjust these two in nice balance has resulted in 
experimental legislation or in action without legis- 
lation, both of which have often been of no genuine 
or lasting benefit to either interest concerned. 

In America, in the first half of 191 7, many of 
our states appeared to be following the lead of 
England in abrogating the compulsory-attendance 
law, urging the same reason for permitting children 
within school age to work in fields and factories. 
Everyone is familiar with the facts presented by 
farmer and industrial employer. In sections whose 
activity has been stimulated by the production of 
war products, such as Bridgeport, Connecticut, other 

13s 



136 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

industries and mercantile establishments have found 
it impossible to run as usual owing to the presence 
of munition plants, which attract an abnormal num- 
ber of workers. 

Not only is neighborhood business affected by 
the presence of war industries, but the farm short- 
age is aggravated ; for the supply of intermittent 
labor, the kind demanded for berry picking, har- 
vesting, and canning, is not forthcoming when the 
workers are offered steady employment in munition 
and textile plants. In 191 7 many small canneries 
were threatened with the prospect of closing and 
letting the adjacent crops spoil in the fields ; hence 
their call for schoolboys to assist them in cultivat- 
ing and harvesting. This resulted in an unprece- 
dented rush of children between 14 and 16 to 
obtain employment certificates, and a clamor from 
those below 14 to be allowed to leave school and 
go to work. 

With the nation and the state urging farmers 
and food producers to make every exertion to 
increase the food supply, legislatures must render 
assistance in solving the labor-shortage problem. 
It need hardly be pointed out that the farmer 
cannot be expected to plant additional acres unless 
he is reasonably sure that it will be possible for 
him to have his acres cultivated and harvested. 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 137 

England as early as September i, 19 14, was feel- 
ing the shortage created by the numbers of men 
enlisting, and every Local Education Authority was 
being besought by farmers and manufacturers to ob- 
tain modifications of the law which, generally speak- 
ing, held children in school up to 14 years. An 
order of the Board of Education to the Local Edu- 
cation Authority in Northamptonshire, answering 
such a plea, stated : 

While the Board of Education have no power to give 
any general directions overriding the ordinary law with 
regard to school attendance and the employment of 
children, ... a Local Education Authority is under no 
obligation to take proceedings in respect of nonattendance 
of a child at school if they are satisfied that there is a 
reasonable excuse for nonattendance. 

The '' reasonable excuse " was found in the over- 
powering clamor of farmers and munition makers 
who were suffering from lack of workers, as in 
Staffordshire, where the petition sent to the Edu- 
cation Authority by the bolt-and-nut manufacturers 
at Darlaston stated that owing to the enlistment of 
men in various branches of his Majesty's forces 
and because of the fact that the firms concerned 
were largely engaged on work of great urgency 
for the naval and military services, "it was desir- 
able, in order to prevent delay in the execution 



138 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

of this work, that the school-attendance by-laws 
should be relaxed for the duration of the war so 
as to permit of the employment of boys over the 
age of 13 years." ^ 

It cannot be stated too strongly that England 
has realized too late the practical impossibility of 
recovery for school of the children thus released, 
and the dangers to the nation of allowing the 
junior population to go into industry without super- 
vision. There will be introduced into our legis- 
latures in 19 18 and later many bills which will 
parallel English action, and the various states must 
watch carefully to see that in their zealous attempts 
to increase food or necessary manufactured supplies 
they do not create and sanction disastrous condi- 
tions for the health and morals of the young. 

Now action in regard to our schools may be 
of several types. First, there may be passed laws 
which abrogate the existing compulsory-attendance 
law; such legislation would be that permitting 
children below compulsory school age to leave 
school. Second, it is possible to have the existing 
laws interpreted so as to excuse absence from 
school, as in North Dakota, where the attorney- 
general in an open letter to school officers, April, 

1 Quoted from correspondence of the Board of Education to the Local 
Education Authority in Northamptonshire. 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 139 

191 7, interprets the section of the school law ex- 
empting children from school attendance in cases 
of necessity to apply to children of school age 
actually engaged in tilling the soil. A third type 
of action is that which suspends the compulsory- 
attendance law under certain conditions; such a 
law is the so-called " Brown Bill," chapter 689 of 
the Laws of 191 7, New York legislature, to which 
reference will be made later. Action may also be 
taken in regard to shortening or lengthening the 
established school year, shifting vacations, and 
changing hours of session. For instance, the 
Bureau of Education at Washington has suggested 
keeping school open twelve months, and this advice 
may be taken in some localities ; it is possible, also, 
that a continuation of the demand for agricultural 
labor of students may result in a different allot- 
ment of vacations in the apple- and peach-growing 
sections, so that students employed in harvesting 
may lose a minimum of school attendance. 

Events moved very rapidly in the spring of 191 7. 
We were called upon by national and state gov- 
ernments, by chambers of commerce and boards 
of trade, by bankers and railroads, to raise crops. 
We were told that America must be the pantry 
for all Europe and that, do the best that we might, 
we should not do overmuch. Obviously, with such 



I40 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

authority back of a movement for increased agri- 
cultural production, it did not take very long for 
state boards of agriculture and state departments 
of education to respond, to say nothing about the 
propaganda set forth by settlements, women's clubs, 
the Y.M.C.A., the Boy Scouts, the National Secur- 
ity League, the Women's Patriotic Service League, 
and a score of other organizations, that put a 
psychological persuasion into the situation which 
was hard for school authorities and school children 
to resist. 

The following data relative to the action of 
a number of the states were compiled by the 
National Child Labor Committee. In general the 
data showed no provision made for supervision, 
for physical examination, for wages, or for defini- 
tion of "passing grade." In some instances there 
were even no age limitations. 

California. During continuance of state of war, state 
board of education with approval of governor may reduce 
school term to six months when necessary " for the plant- 
ing or harvesting of crops or for other agricultural or 
horticultural purposes," 

Indiana. Letter from state superintendent of public in- 
struction to county superintendents, April lo, 19 17, saying 
in part : " It is my wish and order that you permit such 
high-school girls and boys, and also such eighth-grade girls 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 141 

and boys as may care to engage in Home Projects work 
looking toward the increase of our agricultural output, to 
engage in such work and to receive therefor full credit on 
the school records, provided this work is done to the satis- 
faction of the county agent and the county superintendent." 
Plan formulated later by principals and state superintend- 
ents for supervising, certifying, and accrediting such work 
did something to stop a general exodus, but came too late to 
do much good. 

Illinois. State superintendent wrote to local superintend- 
ents, April 10, advising that all boys eligible for working 
certificates be excused from school May i and receive a 
working certificate upon assurance that they have employ- 
ment on a farm or in a garden, credit to be given for work 
upon guarantee that summer months have been spent in 
farming or gardening. 

Kmisas. State board of education advised local school 
oflficials, April 17, that it would "approve granting a full 
year's credit to pupils who have passing grade and who find 
it necessary to withdraw from school before the end of the 
school year either to enlist in the military service or actually 
to engage directly in food production." 

Maine. Boys 16 and over excused from school attend- 
ance, June I to October 31, for work on farms under super- 
vision of Y.M.C. A. official. (See chapter on "Farm Cadets,") 

Maryland. Superintendent of schools, Baltimore County, 
in open letter to school officials, May 11, authorizes the 
employment on farms of "boys and girls who are old 
enough to be of real productive value." On days when not 
so employed they are required to attend school. Children 



142 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

over 1 3 who have attended school one hundred days during the 
year may be employed without permits ; those who have not 
attended one hundred days must have permits. Children 
under 13 must have a permit, "which should not be issued 
to a child who is too immature to do work for which the 
permit is asked." Permits issued for twenty days or less 
may be renewed upon application of parent. 

Similar plan was discussed by state board of education 
but not approved on ground that it might lead to abroga- 
tion of the laws on child-labor and school-attendance. 

Missouri. State superintendent of public schools wrote 
to local officials April 13, suggesting that they "excuse at 
once from high school all boys over 14 years of age who 
will go to farms and work. Give them full credit for their 
year's work at the end of the school year, with the stand- 
ing they have at present. Have the boy who gets the 
credit give evidence satisfactory to you as to his work on 
the farm. Include boys who live in the country and boys 
who will go to the farm to work. Extend the same privilege 
to girls where you deem it advisable," 

New York. (Referred to later in this chapter.) 

North Dakota. Attorney-general in open letter to school 
officers, April, 191 7, interprets section of school law exempt- 
ing children from school attendance in cases of necessity to 
apply to children of school age actually engaged in tilling 
the soil. 

State superintendent of schools in open letter to school 
officials, April, 191 7, recommends that schools should not 
open earlier than October i, with a spring vacation of four 
or five weeks, and that the school be kept open through 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 143 

June and July when there is less and cheaper farm work to 
do. " This would make available, and with a minimum loss 
of school time, some 5000 of the older boys at a time when 
labor is scarce and wages are high." 

Pennsylvania. State board of education, April 19, issued 
circular letter stating that farm and garden work should be 
considered valid excuse for absence from school, and for 
children 12 and over in good standing such work should 
be credited in lieu of school attendance. 

New Jersey. State board of education sent out a circu- 
lar letter to superintendents and principals in which it was 
stated that credit towards graduation might be given in place 
of school work during the time a pupil was actually engaged 
in farm work as a member of the Junior Industrial Army, 
or while called out in the service of the state or of the 
nation as a member of its organized military forces. (Boys 
and girls over fourteen years of age are allowed to enroll in 
the Industrial Army in the agricultural or home-garden or 
the girls' service division.) 

Possibly no great harm was done by the action 
of these state officials and state boards. Yet the 
action affords food for thought; and perhaps the 
best way to bring about reflection is to pass imme- 
diately, without comment, to a quotation taken 
from the London Times of July 19, 191 7, — a quo- 
tation which gives a picture of the end of the road 
on which some of us in this country started in 
the spring of 191 7. 



144 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

The reply, last week, of Herbert A. L. Fisher, Minister 
of Education, to a deputation of the Committee on Wage- 
earning Children was sympathetic and not merely a com- 
mon-form shelving of the issue. The deputation asked for 
legislation restricting the labor of school children out of 
school hours. The extent of the evil was indicated by the 
deputation, but it is doubtful if even the educational public 
know how widespread and deleterious it is. On October 5, 
191 5, we pointed out that nearly half a million children 
between the ages of 12 and 14 years were receiving no 
education, or no education worth having, and that all of 
these were at work which led nowhither at the very age 
when their moral and physical development was at stake. 
Since then the conditions which we condemned have passed 
from bad to worse. Many thousands of children under the 
age of 12, under the ages of even 10 and 11, are at work, 
and willingly at work, since the younger the child, the more 
readily it responds to the demand for helpfulness. Mr. Fisher 
cannot but realize the evil of this exploitation of young chil- 
dren by parents and tradesmen. It is an evil affecting not 
only the efficiency of school life but our whole economic 
system. There never was an economic need for this child 
labor, and the Board of Education admitted in their circular 
to local authorities last week that there is no economic need 
in rural districts for such labor even now. This circular 
was a letter from the National Service Department and 
dealt with the pressure on education authorities in rural 
areas to release boys and girls under 12 for service on 
the land. The letter definitely states that, in view of the 
labor released from the army and the number of women 
now available, " it would appear that there should be no 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 145 

necessity for such a serious interruption as is contemplated 
of the education of the nation's children." 

This should suffice to determine the policy of the rural- 
education authorities. But the position in towns is even 
more urgent, and Mr. Fisher and the government might give 
additional powers to local authorities to deal with the labor 
of children in full-time school attendance. It was certainly 
a mistake in the legislation of 191 3 to make it possible for 
the street trading of such children to receive official recog- 
nition. But street trading is not the chief cause of anxiety. 
Another is the employment of little children by shopkeepers 
and distributing agencies before school, in the dinner inter- 
val, and after school. The local authorities should be empow- 
ered to forbid all employment for wages of children under 1 2 
and to restrict within very narrow limits the employment of 
children at school under 14. 

Naturally Mr. Fisher must not overburden or imperil 
his bill, or interfere with the labor necessary for the war. 
He cannot be expected to change the face of England in 
a moment. But he can strike deep without disturbing the 
organization of society. He can transform from below by 
ameliorating the conditions of very young children. The 
country is ready now for changes that seemed Utopian 
two years ago. By means of nursery schools the nation is 
dealing at last with the raw material that is to be the Eng- 
land of to-morrow. The same principle should be followed 
in the case of children between the ages of 6 and 1 2 years. 
The physical welfare of these children is of the first 
importance. Yet between these ages thousands, through 
the carrying of heavy weights and other means of over- 
strain, are receiving life-long physical injury. All efforts 



146 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

for educational reform are being balked by their employ- 
ment. The elaborate scheme of the Half-Time Council, 
which was reported in our last issue, depends, as indeed 
practically all of the reform schemes and Mr. Fisher's own 
proposals depend, on the physical efficiency of the children. 
The deputation asked that provision should be made for the 
education of children abnormally employed during the war. 

Out of all the literature which has been put 
forth on the relationship of children to industry in 
war time it would appear that Dr. Claxton, United 
States Commissioner of Education, most adequately 
states the fundamental principles, in his circular 
letter to the educational authorities of the country 
issued in June, 191 7. Portions of his letter bear 
directly upon employment of children in time of war. 
Other portions are closely related to statements in 
other chapters. It is well worth quoting in full : 

It is of the utmost importance that there shall be no 
lowering in the efficiency of our systems of education. 
Schools and other agencies of education must be main- 
tained at whatever necessary cost and against all hurtful 
interference with their regular work except as may be 
necessary for the national defense, which is, of course, our 
immediate task and must be kept constantly in mind and 
have right of way everywhere and at all times. From 
the beginning of our participation in the war we should 
avoid the mistakes which some other countries have made 
to their hurt and which they are now trying to correct. 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 147 

If the war should be long and severe, there will be 
great need in its later days for many young men and 
women of scientific knowledge, training, and skill ; and it 
may then be much more difficult than it is now to support 
our schools, to spare our children and youth from other 
service, and to permit them to attend school. Therefore no 
school should close its doors now or shorten its term 
unnecessarily. All young men and women in college 
should remain and use their time to the very best advan- 
tage, except such as may find it necessary to leave for 
immediate profitable employment in some productive occu- 
pation or for the acceptance of some position in some 
branch of the military service, which position cannot be 
so well filled by anyone else. All children in the ele- 
mentary schools and as nearly as possible all high-school 
pupils should remain in school through the entire session. 

When the war is over, whether within a few months or 
after many years, there will be such demands upon this 
country for men and women of scientific knowledge, tech- 
nical skill, and general culture as have never before come 
to any country. The world must be rebuilt. This country 
must play a far more important part than it has in the 
past in agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce, and 
also in the things of cultural life — art, literature, music, 
scientific discovery. 

Russia and China are awakening to new life and are on 
the eve of great industrial development. They will ask of 
us steel, engines, and cars for railroads, agricultural imple- 
ments, and machinery for industrial plants. They will also 
ask for men to install these and to direct much of their 
development in every line. England, France, Italy, and 



148 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

the central empires have thrown into battle a very large 
per cent of their educated and trained men, including most 
of the young professors and instructors in their universities, 
colleges, and gymnasia, lycees, and public schools. Their 
colleges and universities are almost empty. The young 
men who would under normal conditions be receiving the 
education and training necessary to prepare them for lead- 
ership in the future development of these countries are 
fighting and dying in the trenches. All these countries 
must needs go through a long period of reconstruction, 
industrially and in many other respects. Our own trained 
men and women should be able and ready to render every 
possible assistance. It should be remembered that the 
number of students in our universities, colleges, normal 
schools, and technical schools is very small as compared 
with the total number of persons of producing age- 
little more than one half of i per cent. The majority of 
these students are young men and women who are becom- 
ing more mature and fit for service. The older of the 
60,000,000 men and women of producing age are grow- 
ing more unfit and are passing beyond the age of service. 
It should also be remembered that the more mature the 
young men who volunteer for service in the army, the more 
valuable their services will be. 

Therefore a right conception of patriotism should induce 
all students who cannot render some immediate service of 
great value to remain in college, concentrate their energies 
on their college work, and thus be all the more ready and 
fit when their services may be needed either for war or for 
the important work of reconstruction and development in our 
own and other countries when the war shall have ended. 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 149 

All schools, of whatever grade, should remain open with 
their full quota of officers and teachers. The salaries of 
teachers should not be lowered in this time of unusual 
high cost of living. When possible, salaries should be 
increased in proportion to the services rendered. Since 
the people will be taxed heavily by the federal government 
for the payment of the expenses of the war, teachers 
should be willing to continue to do their work, and do it 
as well as they can, as a patriotic service, even if their 
salaries cannot now be increased. All equipment neces- 
sary for the best use of the time of teachers and students 
should be provided, as should all necessary increase of 
room, but costly building should not be undertaken now 
while the prices of building material are excessively high 
and while there are urgent and unfilled demands for labor 
in industries pertaining directly and immediately to the 
national defense. Schools should be continued in full 
efficiency, but in most instances costly building may well 
be postponed. 

During school hours and out of school, on mornings, 
afternoons, Saturdays, and during vacation all older children 
and youth should be encouraged and directed to do as much 
useful productive work as they can without interfering with 
their more important school duties. This productive work 
should be so directed as to give it the highest possible value, 
both economically and educationally. For children and youth 
in schools of all grades there will be need of more effective 
moral training, and provision should be made for this. 
While the war for the safety of democracy is in progress, 
and when it is over, there will be greater need for effective 
machinery for the promotion of intelligent discussion of the 



I50 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

principles of democracy and all that pertains to the public 
welfare of local communities, counties, states, and the nation. 
To this end every schoolhouse should be made a community 
center and civic forum with frequent meetings for the discus- 
sion of matters of public interest and for social intercourse. 

One phrase in Commissioner Claxton's letter is 
especially significant. It is This productive work 
should be so directed as to give it the highest possible 
value, both economically and educationally. In this 
whole question of children and industry in war 
time, we are brought face to face with several facts. 
The first is that industry, both agricultural and 
manufacturing, will demand the services of children. 
Second, that organizations like state and national 
child-labor committees, which have fought for the 
welfare and development of American children, will 
continue to oppose all attempts to break down the 
school system through relaxation of the enforce- 
ment of compulsory-education laws, or to break 
down the labor laws either by giving young chil- 
dren special permits to work or by exempting cer- 
tain establishments from the laws limiting hours 
of labor. Third, that the children themselves will 
desire to work rather than go to school. The com- 
paratively high wages which will exist during a war 
emergency will call them as can no course of study. 
Fourth, that families whose earning member or 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 151 

members are off to war, and who feel in addition 
the higher cost of Hving, will look upon their chil- 
dren as being a possible added source of income. 
And fifth, that school authorities will thus stand 
amidst half a dozen fires. Some will back against 
the wall and say : " I don't believe in closing the 
schools," " Under no conditions will the child-labor 
laws in this state be relaxed," " The war hysteria 
makes me enforce child-labor laws more vigorously 
than ever," " Children have plenty of time to garden 
after school." Others will, under pressure, lose their 
heads, and shut their eyes to the fact that children 
are working illegally. Some may seek for a " reason- 
able excuse," and they can find plenty of such ex- 
cuses by referring to the action in England. Still 
others will go on peacefully without thought or 
action one way or the other. But the rest, and it 
is to be hoped that their numbers are legion, will 
try to discover some means of making this emer- 
gency count in an educational way. Here are some 
of the factors which enter into the situation. 

In the first place, children like to work, that is, 
outside of school, and these work impulses of youth 
ought to be organized to contribute to the edu- 
cative process. It is readily enough granted that 
they have not been in the past. In fact, these 
work impulses have been exploited for private gain. 



152 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

Now, on account of the war, they are aroused to 
a high pitch, and we ought to be able to organize 
them in connection with the new work opportuni- 
ties for higher economic efficiency as well as for 
higher social efficiency. 

In the second place, it is doubtful whether we 
can much longer continue the policy of increasing 
the regular attendance of youth at school without 
giving some consideration to the educative value of 
labor. The educative process taken in its largest 
sense goes on for twenty-four hours a day. It con- 
cerns health, character, mental capacity, citizenship, 
and useful work. To most people the educative proc- 
ess merely centers around the schoolhouse, and such 
think of education in terms of schooling. To them, 
to increase the number of years that youth is 
obliged to go to school is to increase the number of 
years given over directly to the educative process. 
But the child goes to school for about five hours 
a day for five days in the week for about thirty-six 
weeks in the year, and in this time he deals largely 
with books; and many find it a reasonable excuse, 
because they are " going to school " and " getting 
an education," to avoid any useful work. Now some 
kinds of work are wholesome and educative. Most 
farm work comes in the class of useful and profit- 
able employment. When the hours are not too long 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 153 

and the factories and stores are sanitary and the pay 
is reasonable, work in these places may be profitable 
to youth. Because this is not always the case is no 
reason why we should not attempt to make it so. 

It would seem that educators now occupy a stra- 
tegic position from which they may exert a tre- 
mendous influence in the direction of standardizing 
the work of juveniles in terms of the deepest social 
significance, and a good start in this direction may be 
made in meeting the war emergency. The subject is 
so large and the previous discussion of it so limited 
that we have not very much background on which 
to work, and it is not advisable at this time to do 
more than merely hint at some possible procedures. 

First, why not have the rural schools for children 
up to 12 years of age open early in September and 
close the first of August, and make provision for 
stopping the school work of the youngest children 
during the winter months in those parts of the 
country where it is difficult for them to reach 
school ? Why not organize classes in dandelion 
digging, berry picking, currant picking, and even, 
once in a while, weeding, by having a series of field 
and harvesting days under the direction of the 
school teacher with the cooperation of the parents ? 
Why not have able-bodied boys in these rural 
schools released from book work in April and 



154 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

remain out of school until the first of November, 
and then require them to attend school faithfully 
for six days a week during the rest of the year? 
Why not have the boys between 14 and 16 drop 
out of school in June and July to pick small fruits 
and berries and to work in vegetable gardens ? 
Under certain conditions, in regions where such 
service can be used, — which is not often, — they 
might stay out in September to pick fruits and 
gather small crops. 

Of course it is to be expected that the answer 
to all of these questions will be a most emphatic 
No. Yet they have not been set up primarily 
because the farmer tells us that he needs labor, 
but rather because it is felt that boys need labor; 
that is, useful labor. 

Second, why not devise in cities a scheme of 
part-time education for youths between 14 and 18 
years of age who will be needed in the war 
emergency in factories and stores, as well as for 
youths who need useful labor as a part of the 
educative process? If the war falls heavily upon 
us in America, we shall find that these children 
will go anyway. We shall find that the male 
teachers who teach them will be drafted. We may 
even find — although it is hoped not — that the 
school buildings will be taken over for military 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 155 

purposes. But I am not thinking particularly of 
war needs. I am thinking of child needs. England 
proposes to reintroduce into the school system 
children who are now abnormally employed in 
the war. It further proposes to develop out of 
its war experience, on a large scale, the part-time 
and continuation-school idea. It is reported that 
in France a part-time and continuation-school bill 
will be introduced in 19 18. 

Now why not take hold of this whole matter 
of juvenile employment in a constructive way? 
As long as war is upon us we have better oppor- 
tunity than ever of passing through the legislature 
part-time and continuation-school measures. We 
have at the same time, out of all the experience 
of England, every opportunity to formulate laws 
for the employment of juveniles in a way which 
will not break down the educative process, but 
will rather build it up ; and above everything else 
we ought to enforce strictly all child-labor and 
compulsory-education laws which we have on the 
statute books. We may modify them, if we will, 
to meet war emergencies, if it appears absolutely 
necessary, but better than that, we may reconstruct 
them in the interests of the educative value of 
labor when combined with proper rules and regu- 
lations relative to the employment of children. 



156 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

Furthermore, why not find some way of bring- 
ing agriculture into the educative process of the 
city boy ? Would it not be a good idea to establish 
country branches for city schools, providing for the 
older boys a winter course of study in the science 
of agriculture, together with the ordinary academic 
branches of secondary-school education, followed in 
the spring by practice in an agricultural training 
camp? Later on in the season they would go out 
to work individually or in groups for farmers. (See 
chapter on " Farm Cadets.") The older of these 
boys would make admirable assistant teachers and 
supervisors for the younger group of 14-year-old 
to 15-year-old boys who would be sent to these 
camps after schools had closed. We cannot much 
longer avoid the question of bringing agriculture 
to the city boy or, rather, taking the city boy to 
agriculture ; and the past summer's experience with 
city boys working on farms brought forcibly to our 
attention the advantages of a closer relationship 
between city children and country life. 

Mention has been made of the modification in 
1 91 7 of the school-attendance law of New York 
State. Three sections of the act by which these 
modifications were made are quoted in full, as they 
represent legislative action as well as discretionary 
powers of the state educational official. 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 157 

Section i. The provisions of Art. XXHI of the educa- 
tion law, relative to the compulsory education of children, 
may, in the discretion of the Commissioner of Education, 
be suspended for the period between the first day of April 
and the first day of November of each year, or any portion 
thereof, during the time that this act shall remain in effect, 
for the purpose of aiding and performing labor in the culti- 
vation, production, and care of food products upon farms 
and gardens within the state. Such suspension shall be 
subject to such conditions, restrictions, and limitations as 
may be imposed by the Commissioner of Education, and 
shall be subject to rules and regulations to be prescribed 
by him. In case of such suspension, provision shall be 
made for the welfare and protection of the children affected 
thereby, and during the period of such suspension and while 
engaged in such work, they shall be under the supervision 
and direction of the school authorities of the city or district 
in which they reside. . . . 

Section 4. A pupil in the public schools or in any 
state school or institution who is relieved from school work 
and is engaged satisfactorily in agricultural service during 
the present school year shall be given credit for the work 
of the present term without examination, on the certificate 
of the person in charge of such school or institution that 
his work therein up to the time of engaging in such service 
is satisfactory. A pupil in such school or institution who 
engages in such service during the present school year shall 
not incur any loss of standing or credit on account of such 
service. All pupils in public schools who are candidates 
for college-entrance diplomas or other credentials to be 
issued to them at the close of the present school year shall 



158 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

be granted such diplomas or credentials on the certificate 
of the principal of the school that their work up to the 
time of engaging in such service is satisfactory. The 
Regents of the University shall make rules for the purpose 
of giving credit to pupils in the public schools who have 
been in attendance at school during the present school year 
and who have left the schools for the purpose of rendering 
agricultural or industrial service. 

Section 5. The Commissioner of Education shall cause 
appropriate certificates or badges to be prepared and issued 
to pupils in the schools of the state who shall perform satis- 
factory agricultural or industrial service under rules and 
regulations of the Commissioner of Education. 

It M^ill be noted that the compulsory-attendance 
law v^as suspended only between certain periods 
and at the discretion of the Commissioner of Edu- 
cation, and for the sole purpose of permitting 
children to labor in the cultivation, production, 
and care of food products upon farms and gardens 
within the state. 

This bill did not authorize the employment of 
girls in general domestic service. No provision of 
the labor law was repealed, suspended, or modified, 
and the provisions of the labor law relating to the 
employment of children in canneries or in any 
factory or mercantile establishment still remain 
in force. It is true that a bill suspending tempo- 
rarily in whole or in part, at the discretion of the 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 159 

Industrial Commission, provisions of the labor law 
in relation to any employment in the state passed 
the two legislative bodies, but this was wisely vetoed 
by Governor Whitman. 

It will be further noticed that the children thus 
employed within the dates mentioned are to be 
under the supervision and direction of the school 
authorities in the city or district in which such 
children reside. The Commissioner of Education 
thereupon issued certain regulations relating to 
children who might be employed within thp com- 
pulsory school ages. A brief summary follows: 

Boys only, 15 years of age and above, residing in cities. 

Boys only, 14 years of age and above, residing elsewhere 
than in a city. 

Girls, 1 4 years of age, and above, residing outside of cities, 
may work at home in the district in which such girls re- 
side, or at a place sufficiently near such girls' homes as to 
afford supervision by their parents. 

No child shall be employed or permitted to work on 
farms and gardens until such child shall obtain a farm- 
garden permit. 

No child shall receive a farm-garden permit who does 
not present to the issuing officer the written consent of his 
parent or guardian and who is not found to be physically 
competent to perform the labor proposed. 

In the chapter on " Our Colleges and Technical 
Institutes " reference was made to resolutions of 



i6o OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

the Board of Regents and to the fact that the 
State Education Department formulated a plan 
for enlisting and placing high-school boys on the 
farms, for directing and supervising the work of 
such boys, and for the adjustment of school credits. 
With this resolution in mind the Commissioner 
of Education sent out, on April i6, the follow- 
ing letter to all school superintendents and school 
principals of the state. 

To meet the present national emergency, the New York 
State Education Department, after careful consideration, 
issues the following regulations concerning matters that 
vitally affect the interests of the pupils of the secondary 
schools of the state. 

1. The June Regents' examinations will be given as 
previously announced for all pupils who remain regularly 
in school and also for pupils who may enlist for service 
and who wish to take the examinations and are situated so 
that they can do so. For the latter class the time require- 
ment will be waived. 

2. Announcement is made to all the schools of the state 
that any pupil who enlists for military service or who enlists 
for and renders satisfactory agricultural or industrial service 
will be credited with the work of the present term without 
examination on the certificate of the school that his work 
up to the time of enlistment is satisfactory. 

3. Candidates for college-entrance diplomas who are in 
the graduating class of 19 17 will be granted the diploma 
on certificate of the principal that their work up to the time 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH i6l 

of enlistment is satisfactory. The average standing will be 
computed on the basis of the examinations already passed. 

4. Appropriate certificates will be prepared to be issued 
to those pupils in the schools who shall enlist for agricul- 
tural or industrial service and who shall present satisfactory 
evidence of such service. 

5. That all other questions regarding conditions affecting 
the 19 1 8 high-school class be held in abeyance to await 
developments. 

It is believed that principals, teachers, and pupils in all 
secondary schools of the state will appreciate the vital im- 
portance of prompt action in the present crisis and that 
each will esteem it a privilege to ""do his bit " for the 
common good. 

As soon as the schoolboys of the state knew 
of this letter, they all seemed to hear very suddenly 
of jobs on farms, but some, rather unfortunately, 
failed to continue to hear this call vi^hen the end 
of the school year came and they could no longer 
receive school credit for work on the farm because, 
of course, school had closed. It being likely that 
there would be the same general tendency for the 
boys to discover work on farms about the first of 
September when the schools open, it was thought 
well to have a clear understanding of the condi- 
tions of release of boys for farm work in the fall. 
Of course a great many boys were out of school 
during May and June and continued to work all 



l62 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

summer on individual farms or in camps with 
other boys, but " slackers " wanted to stop as soon 
as they received their school credit, and the same 
slackers might be just as slack in returning to 
school, hence the following letter issued by the 
Commissioner of Education on August ii, 191 7: 

To Superintendents, Principals, and Boards of Education : 

In answer to many inquiries as to releasing boys for 
farm service this fall, and in response to the appeal of the 
Food Supply Commission, which states the imperative need 
of such labor as the youth of this state can give in harvest- 
ing the crops, I would urge the educational authorities of 
the state in those sections where the need exists to make 
all possible provision for the special tuition of those pupils 
who may, under the labor laws of the state and the com- 
pulsory-education laws, legally engage in such service. Such 
special instruction, either after hours or in holiday periods, 
may be the special patriotic contribution of some teachers 
to meet the need which seems at present to demand what- 
ever cooperation the school authorities can give. This will 
be most easily arranged by limiting the enlistments, as far 
as possible, to the upper classes, and by arranging for work 
in relays, so that the period of absences may not be unnec- 
essarily long. We ought not to remit in the slightest our 
educational requirements and disciplines, nor take children 
or youth out of the educational processes, but we ought to 
do all that we can, on the other hand, to make it possible 
for the boys of proper age and strength to perform this 
service when it is of real public necessity. 



THE WORK IMPULSES OF YOUTH 163 

The department, wishing to cooperate to this end, makes 
the following determination, effective until November 1,1917: 

The time of study requirements for admission to the 
Regents' examinations, in January and June, 19 18, may be 
waived in the case of any pupil who presents evidence that 

a. He was regularly registered in school at or near the 
beginning of the term in September, 19 17. (Boys already 
at work at a distance from the school may, with the permis- 
sion of the local principal, register by mail.) 

b. He was released by the principal from school for agri- 
cultural service. 

c. He was actually and satisfactorily engaged in needed 
agricultural service while absent from school. 

This privilege should be interpreted conservatively. 
School authorities should excuse pupils from this service 
only where the need is urgent and where it is possible to 
maintain such supervision that certificate of the facts can be 
made from certain knowledge. 

During the summer and fall of 191 7, schoolboys 
from Maine to California responded to the nation's 
call for increased food production. Other seasons of 
scarcity of labor, with the shortage of farm and 
garden products and resultant high prices, are 
doubtless before us. Indeed, we are told that for 
five years at least we are to continue to feel the 
stress of labor shortage due to war and other condi- 
tions. The United States Boys' Working Reserve, 
through state councils of defense and state and 
national departments of labor and agriculture, will 



l64 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

continue to issue proclamations calling upon youth 
to serve the nation. Legislatures will pass or amend 
laws permitting absences from school for industrial 
and farm service. State educational officials will 
issue edicts interpreting legislative action. Schools 
will devise methods of giving school credit for useful 
service. Boys will again leave school to earn and 
serve. Parents will continue to speak with pride of 
the earning of their lads or complain about their 
treatment. Farmers will recall their first experi- 
ences with city boys. Everything will center about 
products, laws, rules, school credits, and dollars. 

Few of us will think of the deeper significance of 
what is behind. We shall hardly realize that the law- 
makers have thought only of a possible increase of 
acreage under cultivation, or increased production 
in factories ; that the farmers and the manufacturers 
had visions merely of good labor at a low figure; 
that the parents saw only an opportunity for a 
"change for the boy"; that the boy had in mind 
only a spending account and release from school. 

We shall forget our unscientific experiments, the 
light handling and selfish exploitation we have 
given to that wonderful possession of youth — the 
work impulses. And the question we should ask 
ourselves is, What educational justification have we 
for this service which the boys have rendered.'* 



CHAPTER VII 

ORGANIZED BOY POWER VS. MILITARY DRILL 

The war has already brought about drastic eco- 
nomic changes in Europe. The recall of men from 
the trenches to perform a more useful professional 
and industrial service behind the lines has demon- 
strated the importance of the supporting civilian 
army. From the viewpoint of the individual, nothing 
can equal the supreme sacrifice of a life. "What 
good," wailed a Yiddish woman on the East Side of 
New York City, " is a free country to me if my Abie 
is killed ? " But in the judgment of the nation the 
garment worker, Abie, who is drafted into service in 
the army is of no greater value than his friend the 
skilled machinist who is allowed to remain in his 
present occupation. The military exemptions of men 
in European armies, the adoption of the selective 
draft in the United States, are acknowledgments of 
the equality of the military and the civilian occupa- 
tions indispensable to military activity. To include 
in our educational law such a recognition, adopting 
a measure permitting the substitution of types of 
vocational training for military training, is but to 

i6s 



i66 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

follow the lead of the national government in declar- 
ing such exemptions a military necessity. New York 
State has made a beginning in this direction. 

In 1916 the legislature enacted the so-called 
" Welsh-Slater " bills, making military and physical 
training compulsory in the secondary schools of 
the state for boys above 16 and under 19 years 
of age. Such military training is to aggregate not 
more than three hours each week between Sep- 
tember first of each year and June fifteenth of the 
next. The law further provides, within the limits 
of appropriation, for the establishment of military 
camps with attendance of from two to four weeks. 
While the operation of these camps and, indeed, 
the introduction of military drill, have been imper- 
fectly carried out, owing to the lack of suitable 
state appropriation to carry on the work on the 
necessary and large scale for a working boy and 
schoolboy population of 240,000, it is the intention 
of the Military Training Commission to insist on 
the requirements of the law. 

The law as passed in 19 16 contained a significant 
clause relative to the excusing of boys exempted 
by the Military Training Commission. It was felt 
by the critics of the bill that, although the law 
requiring military and physical training was a move- 
ment in the right direction, it left much to be 



ORGANIZED BOY POWER 167 

•desired. The ambiguous word " exemptions " is one 
subject to fine distinctions. Furthermore, it was 
felt that the law was essentially one of discrimina- 
tion. The schoolboy of 16 to 19 was in an exclu- 
sive military class, set apart, in his capacity to be 
trained for national service, from the employed boy 
of the same years. 

It is not easy to justify the selection of the high- 
school pupils of the state as the only young people 
who shall be the recipients of military training. The 
report of the New Jersey commission appointed 
to study military training in its relation to high 
schools covers this point admirably. 

The duty of the common defense is one which belongs 
properly to all who are physically capable, and none should 
be deprived of the opportunity of qualifying himself, if such 
opportunity is offered to any, to perform this duty effec- 
tively. It cannot be claimed that the boys of the high 
schools are exceptional, and that they are the only ones 
who can receive this instruction profitably. If there is any 
advantage in it, all boys equal in age and physique to high- 
school boys can receive it with equal probability of profit. 
If it is claimed that the reason for providing this instruc- 
tion for the high schools is that the pupils can best afford 
the time for it, it must be answered that very many of 
these derive an income from labor out of school hours 
which enables them to attend school. These are as worthy 
of exemption from military instruction as those who leave 



i68 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

school because they lack the ambition to continue their 
education, or because they are compelled to do so by circum- 
stances. Whether this instruction is compulsory or optional 
with pupils of the high schools, if required or offered at 
all, it should apply to all boys, out of school as well as in 
school, of prescribed ages and strength. 

Military training and service, if they are necessary, are 
obligations of citizenship, not of education alone. 

It is difficult to contemplate with satisfaction or even 
complacency the social cleavage which is bound to result 
from a system of military instruction which is applied to 
high-school pupils and not to other boys. To assign or 
reserve the privilege, or duty, or obligation, however it is 
regarded, of preparing to fight for the country to the better- 
educated class is just as repugnant to democratic ideals as 
was the practice in days long gone by of leaving it to the 
nobility. To select high-school pupils for this training is 
open to the same objection as would be a plan of selecting 
adults for actual military service solely on the basis of their 
occupations or professions — a plan which would receive no 
consideration. 

Military authorities admit that the fundamental aim of 
every form of military training must be to cultivate physical 
health and strength. As Dr. George Fisher, secretary of the 
Physical Department, International Committee, Y.M.C.A., 
and a member of the New York State Military Training 
Commission, puts it, " In the trainmg camps in England 
it takes a full year to get the men in condition after they 
enlist. England's experience in this war indicates that the 
big problem is not primarily the training of the men on mili- 
tary tactics or drill, but conditioning the men. Therefore 



ORGANIZED BOY POWER 



169 



the lesson to us should be to discover what methods can best 
be used to put and keep men in good physical condition." 
If any evidence of the accuracy of this opinion were 
needed, it is necessary only to consult the records of the 
United States War Department. The following table shows 
the number of applicants for enlistment in the United States 
army, furnished by the several recruiting districts, together 
with the number accepted or rejected in said districts, fiscal 
years ending June 30, 191 1 to June 30, 1915 : 





Total 
Number 
OF Appli- 
cants 


Accepted 


Rejected 




Number 


Per cent of 
total appli- 
cants 


Number 


Per cent of 
total appli- 
cants 


Total for five years 


747,704 


157,043 


21 


590,661 


79 



In order, therefore, that all citizens may be properly 
trained and prepared to perform effectively all their duties, 
no matter what they may be, we recommend and strongly 
urge that the necessary steps be taken to provide for all 
the schools of the state a complete and thorough system 
of physical training. This system should be compulsory for 
all pupils, and should include carefully selected exercises 
adapted to the different ages of pupils, and designed to 
protect their health, stimulate bodily functions, and promote 
physical strength. It should apply to all girls as well as 
boys. It should aim to prevent bodily abnormalities or de- 
formities, or to correct them if they are found to exist. It 
should include personal and community sanitation, first aid 
in emergencies, bandaging, and all forms of instruction in 
personal safety. It should encourage outdoor activities. It 



lyo OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

should provide abundant games for all pupils in which group 
activities are prominent, and in which appeal may be made 
to the spirit of competition. It may include those features of 
military drill which properly serve the purposes of physical 
training, but which must be regarded as subordinate to these 
purposes. It may even include practice with the miniature 
or the service rifle, if such practice is regarded as necessary 
to develop steadiness of nerve, bodily control, and accuracy 
of sight. In the case of such exercises the educational error 
does not lie in their use, but in the exaggerated military 
purpose which they are made to serve. All the features and 
exercises of the thorough course of physical training which 
we recommend should be intimately connected and interre- 
lated, on the one hand with the moral or character-forming 
instruction of the schools and on the other with the com- 
plete provisions for medical inspection which have already 
been made compulsory by law. 

Now boy service should be democratic. The ex- 
emptions, whatever they are, must be made on a 
basis of the equality of the schoolboy and the boy 
engaged in wage-earning. A boy should not be 
excused from his rightful preparedness training be- 
cause he happens to be employed as a bell boy in 
a metropolitan hotel. Such work is not industrially 
productive, nor could any devised system of mili- 
tary equivalents make it a substitution for personal 
contribution to national preparedness. 

In the spring of 19 17 the legislature amended 
the law to include all boys — a drafting of the boy 



ORGANIZED BOY POWER 171 

power of the state in much the same way that the 
European nations in conflict make provisions for 
the full utilization of man power. An additional 
amendment, as stated in chapter 49, Laws of 191 7, 
reads : 

Such requirement as to military training may, in the 
discretion of the commission, be met in part by such voca- 
tional training or vocational experience as will, in the opinion 
of the commission, specifically prepare boys of the ages 
named for service useful to the state, in the maintenance 
of defense, in the promotion of public safety, in the con- 
servation and development of the state's resources, or in 
the construction and maintenance of public improvement. 

The commission was given power to establish 
a bureau of vocational training. This, through 
careful inspection of the work of boys of the ages 
named in industrial, commercial, and agricultural 
pursuits, will determine the types of vocational 
training or vocational experience which, in the 
opinion of the commission, specifically prepare 
boys for service useful to the state. 

Such a bureau would, under normal conditions, 
appoint a few inspectors and investigators to study 
conditions in order that carefully laid plans might 
be made for carrying out the provisions of the 
amendment. But war emergency in the matter of 
food supply gave the Military Training Commission 



172 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

an opportunity to organize at short notice one 
branch of military-equivalent service, that is, the 
farm-cadet unit, and it extended an offer of assist- 
ance to the Food Supply Commission to organize 
farm-cadet bureaus in each of the six military 
zones of the state. Through these the Military 
Training Commission has been useful in placing 
boys upon farms, and in following up such farm 
service with a view not only to determining its 
merit as an equivalent or partial equivalent for 
military service but also (with the cooperation of 
church and business organizations, the Y. M. C.A., 
and the Boy Scouts) to giving the task which 
these boys have been doing on the farms its 
proper place in relation to the physical, mental, 
and social ideals which lie outside the hard and 
often unfamiliar round of field work. 

Important as this farm-cadet service has been in 
the matter of looking toward increased production, 
a more significant work to be developed by the 
Bureau of Vocational Training is that of interpreting 
the spirit and purpose of the amendment already 
referred to, which states that provisions for the 
military-training requirement may be met in part 
by certain types of vocational training or vocational 
experience. The whole program of physical, mili- 
tary, and vocational training is most significant. 



ORGANIZED BOY POWER 173 

wholesome, and far-reaching. It is a program of 
universal training which will be serviceable for war 
and peace alike — a program which will require every 
boy to prepare himself to offer some service in case 
of need, and which stamps that service as equally 
patriotic with the narrower military service in which 
most of the world's supreme valors have been re- 
corded. As John Finley, Commissioner of Educa- 
tion in New York State and one of the members 
of its Military Training Commission, puts it: 

In this amended law we have a program providing, on 
the one hand, for the defensive training of the soldier and, 
on the other hand, for the effective mobilization of the re- 
sources of the nation in training boys for vocations — which 
training of itself exalts and identifies as patriotic service all 
the effective activities of our everyday life. It is a con- 
structive provision for what would have to be done other- 
wise in time of need through exemptions. 

England has had to reach such a program through an 
exempting provision in her plan of cooperative service. 
France has had to come to it by taking men from the 
front for service behind the lines. Germany is finding it 
necessary, in the midst of war, to organize her entire man 
power. 

It is most important that this vocational training 
or experience should be conscious service. The boy 
who offers it must clearly understand why it is 
accepted in part for the required military drill. 



174 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

To fail to inform him is to take from his military 
equivalent the educational value given it by the law. 
Dr. Finley, in his inimitable way, expresses 
this conscious service as it might apply to an adult 
loyal citizenship: 

I make this idea graphic to myself by thinking that 
every man has an imaginary uniform (as every German 
soldier and French soldier had in waiting his green-gray or 
his blue and red uniform), an imaginary uniform of his 
own measurements always in readiness in home or shop or 
office or in some public locker, that he may don at call of 
his community, state, or nation, or perhaps at world need, 
when under compulsion he goes to vote, to pay his taxes, 
to fight against dishonesty, inefficiency, or waste, to inform 
himself upon public questions, or upon his public duties, 
just as one studies tactics in order to help in his country's 
defense, or goes to school as an alien to learn the language 
and institutions of a new land, or joins his neighbors in 
promoting the health of his community, in conserving re- 
sources, in securing means of healthful recreation for chil- 
dren and youth, in improving the highways — when, in 
short, he performs any one of a hundred offices that are 
required of him as an efficient unit in an organized society. 

Those who oppose military training in the 
schools will be less critical of its requirements 
when they are open to the broader interpretation 
suggested in the amendment of 191 7. Those to 
whom the thought of training the young in the 



ORGANIZED BOY POWER 175 

carrying of arms is repugnant may here see the 
educative value of universal service. Early in 
the war Germany discovered that the relation of 
industrial to military service is 2.7 per cent ; that 
is, to keep one man in the field, nearly three men 
must work in those occupations, industrial and 
agricultural, which support the nation at war.^ It 
is the work of the New York Military Training 
Commission to select as a partial military equiva- 
lent such vocational training or vocational experi- 
ence as will, in the present or in the future, 
serve the nation. 

What shall the nature of this work be ? The 
decision is to be left to the state Military Training 
Commission. It is easy to weed out those occu- 
pations which have no national productive or de- 
fensive value, but there will be difficulty in selecting 
those vocations which may or may not be military 
equivalents, which under war conditions may belong 
to the work of an industrial or agricultural army, 
when in peace they seem entirely separate from 
national service. Such an occupation is that of a 
junior telegraph operator, which is not of a pro- 
ductive nature, and yet a very necessary factor in 
war equipment. The case of a printer's apprentice 

1 Authorities differ widely; some even state that the ratio is now as 
high as one to eight. 



176 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

is less equivocal. Only in rare cases could his 
work be accepted as a partial substitute for the 
required service. 

The problem is not to separate the useful from 
the useless occupations, but to discriminate between 
those which may be called upon to serve the state 
and those which have value only to the individual. 
All the productive and useful occupations are not 
socialized; and in selecting those which are partial 
equivalents for the required military drill, we have 
to make a distinction which has not been hitherto 
considered in economic classification of occupations. 

To Ruskin's generation his suggestion that 
Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates should 
serve short periods as builders of roads for the 
empire seemed little short of fantastic. And yet 
the turn of time may even bring about the con- 
firmation of this anomaly. 

There is a parallel between the economic sub- 
stitution for military drill and what William James 
in an astonishingly pertinent essay written in 19 10 
calls the " Moral Equivalent of War." 

If there were, instead of military conscription, a con- 
scription of the whole youthful population to form for a 
certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against 
Nature, . . . the military ideals of hardihood and discipline 
would be wrought into the growing fiber of the people, . . . 




A farm camp is not merely a recreational camp, although it may re-create 

the city youth in terms of country life. A group of Long Island Food 

Reserve Battalion boys with the working impulse strong 




Even hoeing requires special training and was one activity in the pre- 

vocational course in agriculture given at the concentration and training 

camp for Junior Volunteers of Maine 




Instruction in mechanics, electricity, friction, heat, horsepower, etc. nowadays 

centers about an automobile. This work at Wentworth Institute (Boston, 

Massachusetts) has a military-equivalent value 




To learn a trade in an essential industry is to enlist in national preparedness. 

A corner of a Buffalo (New York) vocational school, teaching plumbing 

and steam fitting 



ORGANIZED BOY POWER 177 

To coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in 
December, to dishwashing, clothes-washing and window- 
washing, to road-building and tunnel-making, to foundries 
and stokeholes, and to the frames of skyscrapers, would our 
gilded youths be drafted off, according to their choice, to 
get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come 
back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer 
ideas. . . . Such a conscription, with the state of public 
opinion that would have required it, and the many moral 
fruits it would bear, would preserve in the midst of a pacific 
civilization the manly virtues which the military party is so 
afraid of seeing disappear in peace. 

Liberty Hyde Bailey, author and farmer, formerly 
director of the New York State College of Agri- 
culture, in a chapter of a recent book on " Univer- 
sal Service " expresses in concrete terms a similar 
thought from the angle of the open country. 

Not of all persons will be required the same duty. What 
one is, that shall one give. Society will learn of every man 
and woman what these gifts may be. Some day it will be 
expected that every able person will report himself, at deter- 
mined occasions, for definite service, without pay, in one 
or more of the following privileges, and other privileges, 
under orderly management and recognized public authority : 

I . To clean up the earth and to keep it sweet, — streets, 
roads, paths, byways, vacant lots, stream banks, woods, fields, 
and all open, or public, properties and public works. The 
clean-up days now becoming popular are the beginnings. Of 
course this does not mean that the work of street-cleaning 



178 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

departments and the like is to be taken over or interfered 
with ; but there are times for special house cleaning. If 
every person felt it devolving on him to help in keeping 
the earth decent, he would be likely to exercise a proper 
restraint in befouling it; and as charity begins at home, so 
should his restraint begin on his own premises, even extend- 
ing to the parts out of sight of the public. 

2. To take part in the construction of halls and premises 
for community activities. 

3. To aid in the making of beautiful and public places 
accessible and to protect them. Every community with a 
rural environment, and practically every small city, has 
a near-by area that could be reserved and opened by coop- 
erative action of the people, — days set aside when paths 
should be made, bridges built, retreats discovered, trees and 
streams put in shape, insects destroyed. Such reservations 
are not really public until the people volunteer to help in 
them. 

The farther places, the real backgrounds of the race, will 
some day be opened as well as reserved, and made of much 
use to very many people besides casual visitors and sight- 
seers. We shall learn how to project whole counties and 
cities, and even larger units, into the making and keeping 
of them in a way that is not yet visioned. This can be 
accomplished as easily as armies can be sent into the field, 
but it will require a type of organization at which we have 
not yet arrived. It will be worth while to develop public- 
service armies. 

4. To demand the freedom of the earth for its inhab- 
itants, under proper recognition of vested rights. The 
conception of the freedom of the sea has had an interesting 



ORGANIZED BOY POWER 179 

evolution, — the escape from the old sea fear, the long 
years of piracy, the buccaneers, letters of marque and re- 
prisal, treaty ports, smuggling, and all the rest ; finally has 
come the demand of equal opportunities for all and the 
open door. We must have the open door to fields and 
shores, to commanding hills that should not be exclusive 
property ; find trails and walks and avenues to places the 
people ought to know. All this requires exploration, tramps 
far and near, maps, propaganda. All scenic parts will be 
marked. The public shall know all good places. 

5. To protect the products of the earth ; and to protect 
the earth itself. The products to which I now refer are 
those not the property of individuals, — the birds, the beasts, 
the fish, the vegetation. The bird sanctuaries now so well 
accepted are good beginnings, as also the wild-flower preser- 
vation societies, the nature-study groups, and many others; 
but the individual is not yet sufficiently impressed with this 
feeling in his own action. 

To protect the earth is to save its fertility. This is the 
fundamental conservation. Not all persons can participate 
here, but every citizen can be mindful of the necessity of 
it and aid in creating public sentiment. I wait for the com- 
ing together of new organizations or societies that shall 
have for their purpose the conservation of fertility. These 
will be much more than agricultural and rural organizations, 
and their work need not be technical or occupational. They 
may include all persons, and the discussions and interests 
may run the range of man's relation to land. 

To leave his piece of earth more productive than when 
he took it is the obligation of the good farmer, for there 
are constantly more persons to be supported. In the large 



i8o OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

sense every one of us is a farmer, for the keeping of the 
earth is given to the human race. We begin to understand 
vaguely what relation the good keeping of the land bears to 
national questions. 

6. To keep the public health, — to protect it by keeping 
one's body well, by taking care to commit no nuisance, to 
contaminate no source of public infection, and to lend one's 
self to participate in the correcting of abuses. 

To be physically fit and uncomplaining is a public duty. 
Maybe we shall find ways to demand physical training of 
the people as effective as that afforded by military training 
but without its sinister intentions. 

Society will take over unto itself the oversight not only 
of physical training and of providing that children shall be 
well born but also more and more the oversight of the treat- 
ment of disease, as a public necessity. We shall train the 
sound to care for the unsound. 

7. To come with personal succor as well as with money and 
goods in time of flood and disaster, to visit the sick and the 
afflicted, to relieve the poor and unfortunate. We shall learn 
how to organize the vast resources in men and women who 
are willing but do not know how, who are undiscovered and 
untrained, yet who could be shaped into a great army of 
assistance. 

8. To respond promptly to the call of societies or groups 
that act in the public interest ; to participate in the many 
neighborhood cooperations. 

As an illustration of the manner in which a 
military equivalent may be determined, an illus- 
tration has been taken from some agricultural 



ORGANIZED BOY POWER 



i8i 



activities. Before considering the military equiva- 
lent in farm work it is necessary to give a brief 
description of the basis upon which the Military 
Training Commission will probably work in this 
matter. The basis, in brief, is the " man work 
unit " idea as developed by Dr. George F. Warren, 
Professor of Farm Management, New York State 
College of Agriculture. 

A man work unit is the average amount of work 
accomplished by a man in ten hours. A horse 
work unit is the average amount of work accom- 
plished by a horse in ten hours. For New York 
conditions, an acre of the following crops repre- 
sents the man and horse units indicated below. 
In a majority of cases the numbers which follow 
are based upon cost accounts. In some instances, 
where data were limited, the results are more or 
less an estimate. 



Man Units 


Horse Units 


Crops 


6 


6 


Corn for grain husked from shock (New 
York method) 


3 


5 


Corn for grain husked from standing stalks 
(Western method) 


5 


6 


Corn for silage 


3 


5 


Fodder corn 


6 


6 


Sweet corn 


lO 


lO 


Potatoes 


4 


5 


Field beans 



I82 



OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 



Man Units 


Horse Units 


Crops 


10 


10 


Cabbage 


20 


7 


Tobacco 


50 


8 


Hops 


IS 


12 


Roots (field beets, mangels, etc.) 


2 


3 


Buckwheat, oats, barley, wheat, spelt, rye, 
field peas, and mixtures of these 


I 


I 


Hay for cutting, alfalfa, clover, timothy 


2 


3 


Oat hay, millet, and other grains cured for hay 


IS 


5 


Apples, bearing, when cared for in a commer- 
cial way 


3 


I 


Apples, bearing, when little or no care is given 


15 


S 


Other tree fruits, bearing 


2 


I 


Fruit not of bearing age 


20 


5 


Berries 


3 


S 


Peas for canning factory 


I 


I 


Seeds (alfalfa, clover, timothy) 


3 


S 


Sorghum 


12 


6 


Cotton 


10 to 35 


2 to 10 


Truck crops 



For live stock listed below, the man units and 
horse units are as indicated. 



Man Units 


Horse Units 


Live Stock (Basis of One) 


IS 


2 


Cows, ordinary dairy (majority grades) 


20 


2 


Cows, pure-bred dairy (majority pure-bred) 


15 


15 


To be added per cow when milk is retailed 


2 


O.I 


Heifers, calves, bulls, steers, and colts when 
running loose 


2 


O.I 


Steers or other cattle, fattened or only win- 
tered 


o-S 


0.05 


Breeding ewes and bucks (covers work on 
lambs) 



ORGANIZED BOY POWER 



183 



Man Units 


Horse Units 


Live Stock (Basis of One) 


0.2 


0.02 


Other sheep or lambs, fattened or only win- 
tered 


3 


0.05 


Brood sows (covers work on pigs till weaned) 


0.5 


O.I 


Boars 


0-5 


0.1 


Other hogs raised during the year 


0.15 


0.02 


Hens and other poultry 


o.is 


0.02 


Pullets, etc., raised during the year (covers 
work on cockerels) 


I.O 


0.05 


Bees, per hive 


6 


0.0 


Day-old chicks per 1000 



In order to interpret the man-work-unit idea in 
terms of the military requirements of New York 
State that 1 6-year-, 17-year-, and 18-year-old boys are 
to participate in such military training or as a par- 
tial equivalent may offer farm experience or farm 
training, it is necessary to translate the number 
of hours required for such military instruction into 
crop values or, to use the term already understood, 
man work units. 

Since there are 288 days or 41.1 weeks in the 
required military-training period (September first to 
the fifteenth day of June next ensuing), a boy must 
drill 123.3 hours. This represents on the average 
12.33 "^3.n work units. 

For example, if a boy grows 1.2 acres of potatoes 
or takes entire charge of .6 acres of berries, includ- 
ing cultivation, picking, marketing, etc., for a period 



1 84 



OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 



of one year, he has spent in productive agricultural 
work the number of hours required for military drill. 



Man Units 


Military Equivalent 


6 


2.05 acres corn for grain husked from shock (New York 




method) 


5 


2.46 acres corn for silage 


6 


2.05 acres sweet corn 


10 


1.233 acres potatoes 


4 


3.08 acres field beans 


10 


1.233 acres cabbage 


20 


.616 acres tobacco 


5° 


.246 acres hops 


15 


.822 acres roots (field beets, mangels, etc.) 


2 


6.16 acres buckwheat, oats, barley, wheat, spelt, rye (field 




peas and mixtures of these) 


I 


12.33 acres hay per cutting (alfalfa, clover, timothy) 


2 


6. 1 6 acres oat hay, millet, and other grains cured for hay 


15 


.822 acres apples, bearing, when cared for in commercial 




way 


3 


4. 1 1 acres apples, bearing, when little or no care is given 


15 


.822 acres other tree fruits, bearing 


2 


6.16 acres fruit not of bearing age 


20 


.616 acres berries 


3 


4. 1 1 acres peas for canning factory 


I 


12.33 acres seed (alfalfa, clover, timothy) 


3 


4. 1 1 acres sorghum 


lo to 35 


1.233 acres truck crops 



In the case of live stock a boy can do all the man 
work necessary in caring for 6 heifers or 82 hens or 
approximately one ordinary cow in the time which 
another boy may be giving to military training. 



ORGANIZED BOY POWER 



185 



The exact military equivalents are shown in the 
second column. 



Man Units 


Military Equivalent 


15 


.82 COWS, ordinary dairy (majority grades) 


20 


.616 cows, pure-bred dairy (majority pure-bred) 


2 


6. 1 6 heifer, calves, bulls, steers, and colts 


2 


6. 1 6 steers or other cattle, fattened or only wintered 


0.5 


24.66 breeding ewes and bucks (covers work on lambs) 


0.2 


61.6 other sheep or lambs, fattened or only wintered 


3 


4. r I brood sows (covers work on pigs till weaned) 


0.5 


24.66 other hogs raised during year 


0-5 


24.66 boars 


0.15 


82 hens and other poultry 


0.15 


82 pullets, etc., raised during the year (covers work on 




cockerels) 


0-3 


4 1. 1 hives of bees 


6 


2.05 thousand day-old chicks 



Military equivalents as related to farm training 
or farm experience appear to be much easier to 
develop than those concerning mechanical training 
and experience, especially where the work of 16- 
year-old to 19-year-old boys is concerned. 

At the present writing there seems to be on 
the part of the public no very clear understanding 
of the government's policy relative to exemption 
for persons who are performing industrial and 
farm service. If it is difficult to determine an ex- 
emption policy for drafted men, it is very evident 



i86 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

that when boys of i6, 17, and 18 years of age have 
become industrial drifters and have not decided 
upon a vocational career, the determination of a 
military-equivalent policy for them is a problem 
much harder of solution. 

Again, a study of boys' occupations reveals the fact 
that only a very small proportion of those "above 
the age of 16 years and not over the age of 19 
years" who are at work in our cities are engaged 
in occupations that will specifically prepare them 
for service that has productive or defensive value. 
Under the auspices of the Committee on Voca- 
tional Help to Minors the Bureau of Attendance 
of New York City made an extended survey, dur- 
ing the summer of 191 5, of 5000 children who 
had left school between the ages of 14 and 16 
and entered industry. Because of the vast amount 
of labor involved in tabulating the data that were 
collected, a random sampling was made of 150 
boys and the same number of girls from each of 
5 attendance districts. The 5 districts were selected 
to represent as nearly as possible the general char- 
acter of the city. Each of these 1500 cases, 750 
boys and 750 girls, was given a key number so 
that when the information was tabulated it would 
be possible to identify each case and verify the 
information. Of the 750 boys 546 were within 



ORGANIZED BOY POWER 187 

the ages designated by this statute, 188 were 
under 16 years of age and 16 of the boys were 
19 years old. 

Half of the boys were either errand-messengers, 
clerks, or office boys. There were 213 in the 
errand-messenger service, 107 clerks, and 55 office 
boys. Another 100 were either stock boys, wagon 
boys, or packers and wrappers. The largest trade 
group was made up of 14 boys who were classed 
as machinists' apprentices, and the second largest 
trade group, that of electricians, had but 5 boys. 

The departments in which these 750 boys were 
working indicate the nature of the employment. 
There were 265 in offices, 134 in the shop depart- 
ments of factories, 165 in shipping and delivery 
departments, 92 in salesrooms, 35 in stock rooms, 
31 in other departments, and 28 cases where the 
investigator had failed to secure this information. 

A careful study of the work done by each of 
the 750 boys resulted in the selection of 32 who 
seemed to be doing work that might give them the 
specific training indicated as essential. The result 
of this study can be summarized under the headings 
of the trades the boys were learning. 

Blacksmith. The one boy apprenticed to this trade had 
been working in the shop for seventeen months, was 
earning $13 a week, and was perfectly satisfied with his 



l88 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

work. So he was likely to continue until he learned 
the trade. 

Brass worker. Of the two boys of this group, one had 
served twelve months and the other twenty-four months 
at the trade. They earned respectively ^5 and ^6,50 a 
week and both intended to remain at the trade until it 
was learned. 

Carpenter. There were two boys serving as carpenter's 
helpers. With one it was simply a temporary position. 
The other had been working at the trade for a year, and 
although he was receiving but $^ a week, he intended to 
remain at the trade. 

Electrician. Three of the five boys working at this 
trade had been employed for over eighteen months as 
electricians' helpers. The other two had had four months 
and two months respectively of such experience. The 
five all expressed a determination to remain long enough 
to learn the trade. 

Ship fitter. The one boy in this group, although out of 
school over a year, had been working at the navy yard 
but two months. 

Locksmith. With only ten days' experience this boy 
was ready to quit. 

Machinist. The average time spent by the 14 boys 
classified as machinists was less than three and one-half 
months, and not one of the group had worked as long as 
a year. Three were running drill presses, i was clean- 
ing the wheels and pipes of a feather-bone machine, 2 
were not employed. Most of these were dissatisfied and 
looking for other work. A boy who had been working 



ORGANIZED BOY POWER 189 

eleven months on a screwing machine, i who had worked 
nine months repairing autos, and i who had worked eight 
months as a machinist's helper — 3 out of the 14 — had 
worked long enough at the trade to know that they liked 
it, and expressed the intention of learning the trade. 

Plumber. Three of the four boys classified as plumbers' 
helpers had worked over a year and a half at the trade, 
liked the work, and expected to follow it. The fourth boy 
was using it as a temporary job. 

Solderer. The one boy in this line was dissatisfied with 
the job and with his pay. 

Sheet-metal worker. The one boy serving as a tin-roofer's 
helper had worked for the firm for a year and was per- 
fectly satisfied with all conditions. 

There seem to be 14 of the 750 boys who had 
been working long enough at a trade and were 
sufficiently pleased with the prospects for the 
future to make one safe in saying that they 
would probably complete their apprenticeship — 
although this conclusion may not be justified. 
These 14 were distributed as follows: 

Blacksmith i 

Brass worker 2 

Carpenter i 

Electrician • 3 

Machinist 3 

Plumber 3 

Sheet-metal worker _r^ 

Total 14 



I90 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

This study of Mr. Chatfield's shows that not 
only were very few of the boys between the ages 
of 1 6 and 19 receiving vocational experience that 
would train them to be useful to the state in the 
maintenance of defense or in the other interests 
of the state as outlined in the bill, but also boys 
of these ages are likely to change their work rather 
frequently. There were 184 of these 750 boys 
who had been out of school between three and 
four years when this study was made. Of these 
184 boys 41 were still working at the job they 
first had when they left school, 47 were on the 
second job, 41 were on the third job, and 13 had 
made eight or more changes. 

I know of no study which more clearly points out 
the " blind alleyness " of the employment of chil- 
dren. However, some of us, including Dr. David 
Snedden of Columbia University, feel that a better 
term than " blind-alley occupations " would be 
" occupations involving juvenile employment." To 
us the evil of errand-messenger, clerk, or office-boy 
service is not that boys wander into or are thrust 
into a line of work which may be a blind alley, but 
rather that no provision is made in the public-school 
system for giving the boys a short preparatory 
training helpful to them in this tem,porary service^ 
and that no training which would help them, to get 



ORGANIZED BOY POWER 191 

out of such work is given them in the office^ store, 
or factory. If society would frankly recognize that 
there are juvenile employments and that boys might 
well work in them while they are juveniles and yet 
be trained through such work, and apart from such 
work in continuation schools, to discover themselves 
and to prepare themselves for other work, we might 
develop a constructive educational program. 

This study certainly shows the waste of the boy 
power of the state and proves conclusively that 
there is need for the state to grapple consciously 
with the problem of conserving its youth ; and 
when one reads this summary of an accurate and 
previously unpublished report, one is led to believe 
that William James, John Dewey, Liberty Hyde 
Bailey, and John Finley are right in their conten- 
tion that there should be a mobilization of the boy 
force of the state looking toward conservation of 
the boy power that it may lead into training for 
skilled work, into citizenship, into sturdy health, 
and into right living. 



CHAPTER VIII 
RED CROSS AND OTHER COMMUNITY WORK 

Thoughtful people are becoming disposed to 
criticize the present methods employed in many 
of our sewing, cooking, and millinery classes. It 
is felt that the girls in these classes, through the 
work which they do, think of themselves first, last, 
and all the time. They spend time on embroidery 
to cater further to decorative instincts long estab- 
lished by custom without much thought as to 
artistic values. They spend half a year making 
graduation dresses which they may wear before 
admiring parents. They copy the latest fashion 
in hats without thought as to utility or beauty. 
They knit feathery neck pieces and neglect stock- 
ing darning. They laboriously sew by hand articles 
which had better be made on a machine. 

Our girls must learn to think of others than 

themselves. Their sewing and millinery must get 

away from the individual-problem idea. Of course 

girls must learn to sew by hand, especially when 

the home in these days teaches so little in the way 

of hand sewing. But after they have learned to 

192 



RED CROSS WORK 193 

sew by hand, they should not continue to use 
hand sewing on work that should be done on a 
sewing machine. Of course it is wise to train 
girls to make some of their own clothing, but to 
make this clothing without regard to study of tex- 
tiles or adaptation to personal needs or the eternal 
fitness of things is not in accord with the educa- 
tional purpose of our schools, which is to train 
personal character as well as to develop skill in 
domestic arts. When the family hosiery needs 
darning, and the small children of the family need 
clothes, and the schoolgirl needs a middy blouse 
or a school uniform, it is unwise to spend so 
much energy on continuing a type of domestic 
art which lacks the socialized appeal necessary 
to conform with modern social needs and modern 
industrial methods. 

The teachers of household arts are beginning 
to see the need for reform. Many are bringing 
into the school life such problems as the mending 
and darning of the family clothes; cooking school 
luncheons ; managing day nurseries for babies of 
working mothers; making table and bed linen for 
hospitals; making jams and jellies for charitable 
societies. Such teachers have welcomed the oppor- 
tunity offered by the present war to forward the 
new idea of socializing domestic-arts work. They 



194 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

have been impatient of the dilettante work which 
they formerly did when their girls practically 
wasted hours of school time in making things 
which could be bought for less than the cost of 
materials, to say nothing about the cost of time 
of the girls themselves, who are in school but a 
few years at best — years when they should be re- 
ceiving instruction in subjects which have real 
training values. These progressive teachers have 
desired that their girls develop more speed; that 
they receive training helpful in meeting the actual 
trade conditions in dressmaking and millinery 
shops; that they learn to work together on some 
common problem which all may see is worth while 
and for a purpose which is larger than themselves. 
Red Cross work has given these teachers the op- 
portunity which they sought. They believe that 
the Red Cross work during the war may easily be 
converted into community work after the war is 
over. Hospitals, charity organizations, orphan asy- 
lums, and homes are always with us. The great 
appeal now, obviously, is Red Cross work. The 
permanent appeal is always the need of the home 
and the community. 

An activity which has been very general through^ 
out the country, as well as in France and England, 
has been the voluntary contribution of the work of 



RED CROSS WORK 195 

women's organizations to the Red Cross Society. 
The making of hospital suppHes belongs more 
peculiarly to women than do many forms of war 
work, and it is easily incorporated into the sewing 
courses of our elementary and secondary schools. 
A feature that makes it especially adaptable to 
schools is the standardization by the present busi- 
ness manager, under whose direction blue prints, 
photographs, and written and pictured specifications 
have been prepared. 

Those of us who are interested in the methods 
employed in vocational schools to turn out standard 
products appreciate the benefit to the girl of learning 
to work from well-planned directions and of turn- 
ing out a product exactly corresponding to specifi- 
cations. It is believed that this manner of doing 
the work holds an educational value which entitles 
it to a place in the sewing course of every school. 
Both technique and speed elements are necessary 
for the condition of need which the Red Cross is 
meeting. As pupils are called upon to respond to 
this demand for quantities of garments and hospital 
supplies, as well as for accurately made articles, 
they will become trained in speed and accuracy 
while rendering a distinct service to their country. 

In the state of New York about 3000 girls in 
sewing classes began work for the Red Cross on 



196 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

March i, 191 7, under the direction of Anna Hedges 
Talbot, state speciaHst in girls' vocational work; 
the work being done voluntarily by both schools 
and pupils. To obtain materials, arrangements 
were first made with local Red Cross chapters; 
but in many places the lack of a chapter or its 
lack of funds prevented the cooperation with the 
schools, and material was supplied by liberal con- 
tributions from women's clubs, which realized the 
necessity of making use of the offer of the girls' 
services, thus causing more work to be turned 
into Red Cross channels than would have been 
possible without this financial aid. In organizing 
the work the various localities sent an authorized 
school person, generally the teacher of household 
arts, to confer with the Red Cross people as to 
what articles were needed and how they should 
be made, and to bring back to the school written 
specifications, paper patterns, and models. In many 
places the teachers took a course of instruction 
under some Red Cross nurse specifically qualified 
to give sewing instruction. 

In this careful way the schools proceeded, and 
within six weeks returned reports to the State 
Education Department showing that every kind of 
article which was needed, from the simplest surgical 
dressings to the most carefully finished surgeon's 



RED CROSS WORK 197 

gown, had been made by about 3000 girls working 
on an average of one or two hours a week during 
their regular school time. That none of this work 
had to be ripped or done over when it reached the 
Red Cross headquarters reflects credit on both 
girls and instructors. 

One comparatively small sewing class in the 
vocational school at Mount Vernon, New York, 
filled a box for the Belgian Relief, according to 
Red Cross specifications, as follows: 

1 8 hot-water-bag covers 9 pairs slippers 

54 sheets . 9 convalescent gowns 

36 pillow cases 36 pairs socks 

27 wash cloths 18 pairs bed socks 

27 pairs of pajamas 18 bath towels 

36 hospital-bed sheets 36 face towels 

In addition this class shipped in a few months over 
2000 separate articles to Red Cross headquarters; 
as, for example, 

75 children's dresses 14 chemises 

149 tampon bags 403 body bandages 

224 baby bootees 42 eye bandages 

219 ward shoes 373 bathing suits 

76 hospital nightshirts 1 2 air cushions 

62 crocheted trench caps 77 pneumonia jackets 

597 slings 50 bath towels 

19 petticoats 

All the schools of the state inquired if they 
might go on with this work when the schools 
opened in September. Schools which were not able 



198 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

to do the work in the spring were ready to begin 
on the first day of school in the fall. The work, 
however, has hitherto been neglected except in 
the curriculum of schools which have vocational 
courses, so that only girls electing domestic arts 
have had the opportunity of doing it as a part of 
their school program, but there is no reason why 
it should be limited to these girls. Those who are 
taking academic courses in high schools — and 
they greatly outnumber the vocational students 
— should have a chance to render service through 
the schools. In this connection it is well to say that 
the burden of doing productive work in war service 
should not be limited entirely to students in voca- 
tional courses. It will be a mistake to throw the 
burden of useful service upon a special group and 
in this way help develop the notion that those 
who take classical courses have nothing to do but 
look on, while those in vocational courses are to 
do the work. 

Voluntary after-school clubs were organized in 
a great many schools, but no voluntary work can 
be systematized or directed so well as courses 
incorporated in the curriculum, and it is suggested 
to the schools of the country that special Red Cross 
courses be offered and that all girls be expected 
to devote a few hours a week to the work. 



RED CROSS WORK 199 

The following quotation from Edouard Petit's 
book " De 1' ecole a la guerre " on what the normal 
schools of France are doing ought to be enough 
to inspire our American girls. 

The girls of the normal schools of France are working 
very hard, knitting, sewing, making hospital supplies, in 
the intervals of their school work ; also acting as laun- 
dresses, secretaries, bookkeepers, etc. They are not old 
enough to be nurses. In addition to the work for the 
armies, they give a part of their time to work for other 
students. They are providing for the girl students of the 
normal schools in the invaded districts, many of whom 
were obliged to make long journeys on foot, clad in sum- 
mer clothes, with no chance to carry even a change of 
clothing with them. The school at Fontenay appealed to 
the normal schools for aid for its students ; other appeals 
followed, some from schools in the districts from which 
the invaders were driven out. Very soon in all the normal 
schools of France girls were cutting and sewing, providing 
new garments, or garments from their own supply, to be 
sent to the towns in the north of France. Some of these 
supplies are held in reserve for the towns that are still to 
be liberated. One teacher writes : " Our young girls are 
glad to come to the aid of their fellow students who are not 
known to them but who are coming to seem nearer as I 
have them learn about the schools, read the letters that are 
received, etc. Anything which makes real and tangible the 
responsibility of this friendly help ought to be encouraged." 

As the need arises, our secondary-school girls will respond 
in like manner. 



200 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

The preparation needed to initiate Red Cross 
work in any large way in the schools of a state 
is considerable. There is a good deal of organi- 
zation and consequent detail connected with it. 
The domestic-arts teachers of a school district or 
county ought to be called together and instructed 
in the minutiae of garment-making and surgical 
dressings. With the blue prints, photographs, and 
written specifications already issued by the Red 
Cross headquarters at Washington these teachers 
could then work out a full set of directions for 
each article which would be specific and graphic. 
These could be printed by the state printer or, 
better, by the boys in a vocational school. In 
addition, moving-picture reels of processes carried 
on according to the most modern methods of 
workroom procedure could be shown to those who 
have not been in contact with present-day modes 
of work. 

In order to excite interest on the part of the 
community in rural districts where this work has 
not as yet penetrated to any extent, moving pic- 
tures of processes of making surgical dressings, 
pajamas, surgeons' gowns, or children's dresses 
could be exhibited as illustrating what other sec- 
tions of the state are already doing. These moving 
pictures could be taken of girls at work in an 



RED CROSS WORK 201 

up-to-date New York City factory, and the reels 
could be either purchased outright or rented from 
an educational-film company. In Washington the 
Department of the Interior has a number of reels 
which have been put at the disposal of the Red 
Cross, and will make more if the occasion demands. 
Slides too could be made showing special opera- 
tions, special garments, and special methods of 
arranging work. When public interest has been 
aroused at a public meeting in a small center, the 
school will find it easy to take up the work and 
push it forward. The person in charge of the work 
would have to keep in constant touch with the 
Red Cross headquarters as to the needs for gar- 
ments and hospital supplies, as well as to the 
changes that from time to time have to be made 
in the kind and quality of supplies. A chart could 
be made of the capacity as to equipment and num- 
ber of pupils, and the present grade of their work- 
ing ability, for each place where a school is located. 
Brief reports could be sent to a state director from 
these schools as to what they could make, when 
they could make it, and when specified articles 
could be finished. Thus there would be a line 
out from a central supervisor to each school in 
the state where pupils are old enough to do any 
work of this public-service nature. Along this line 



202 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

would travel the information as to what was being 
done and what would be the next thing to be done. 

Knitting by hand is one of the occupations 
which many girls and women are taking up. 
One drawback to hand-knitting is that it takes 
a good deal of time, and in the case of socks, 
at least, the results of amateur work may be 
uncomfortable to the wearer. It is suggested that 
schools put in knitting machines. One school at 
Yonkers, New York, has such a machine. It en- 
ables its operator to finish a sock every twenty min- 
utes, or 12 pairs in an eight-hour day. It is possible 
to knit wristlets and sleeveless sweaters on these 
machines. The Vacation War Relief Committee 
of New York City has been responsible for the 
sale of 980 of these machines, on which over 85,000 
pairs of socks have been made during the past year. 

A letter written to me by Mettie B. Hills, Director 
of Girls' Work in Troy, New York, relative to her 
Red Cross work is so full of human interest and 
gives in such detail the excellent methods which 
she employed that I quote it in full. It will serve as 
suggestive material for other equally enthusiastic 
and competent teachers. 

My office has been turned into a cutting room. Girls 
are now at a large table cutting hospital bed shirts with 
just as little waste as possible. Smaller girls are snipping 



RED CROSS WORK 203 

the few waste pieces, and one little girl at the end of the 
table is filling a fracture pillow with the snips. In my 
machine-sewing room the girls are making hospital bed 
shirts. Each girl has a different operation. The shirts 
move through the cutting room to this room and from 
one machine to the next just as they do in a factory. They 
finally reach the inspection table, where they are inspected 
as they are folded, and an inspection card is placed in the 
pocket. They are then piled up for that final inspection 
which I give every article before it goes to our stock room. 
Here we hold all articles until we have enough to make 
the moving worth while, and then they are taken to 
Red Cross headquarters in the city truck. The chairmen 
of each Red Cross division of our local chapter are notified 
beforehand that things are coming and they are at head- 
quarters to receive our work and sign for it. I tell you, 
it is a big day for all when the school work is turned in. 
I hear about it for weeks afterward. 

The girls do not stay at one operation. As soon as they 
are ready, they are promoted to the next. [And in this con- 
nection may I call the reader's attention to the chapter which 
brought out the new spirit of teaching the household arts ?] 

The little jacket which is hanging in my clothespress is 
only the beginning of a big piece of work which I expect 
to push during the winter, a piece of work which I believe 
will do more to standardize the girls' work than anything 
we have yet done. 

Another room is given over to knitting, and the girls 
pass from one tj^e of work to another. We have a teacher 
from the Red Cross rooms who is showing the older girls 
how to make oakum pads. The work is really fascinating, 



204 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

and fortunately we no longer have to think of the money 
for the materials, as the work done in the schools has been 
of so much higher standard that the local chapter has voted 
me $500 in order that there might be no danger of our 
stopping the work. I am inclosing a list of what our schools 
have done in the past three months. 

I. For the Red Cross Society 

1. Hospital Supplies 

Hospital boots 48 

Hospital shoulder wraps 36 

Hospital shirts 156 

Pajama suits 48 

Surgeons' operating gowns 6 

Surgeons' operating caps 12 

Surgeons' operating helmets 48 

Slings 492 

i-inch bandages 12 

2-inch bandages 13 rolls 

2. Surgical dressings 22 

Oakum pads 20 

Fracture pillows 20 

n. For the Soldiers' Welfare League 

1. "Housewives" for Second New York Regiment 48 

2. " George Washington kits " for Second New York 

Regiment 

3. Neckerchiefs for Second New York Regiment . 120 

4. Pajama suits 32 



HI. For the National Navy Comforts League 

1 . Knitted mufflers for the army and navy . . 

2. Knitted sleeveless jackets for the army and navy 

3. Knitted wristlets for the army and navy . 

4. Knitted caps for the army, navy, and aviators 

5. Knitted hospital socks 



313 
25 
40 pairs 

2 

7 pairs 



RED CROSS WORK 205 

IV. For the Surgical Dressings Committee (French) 

1. Slings 

2. Fracture pillows 

3. Eye binders 

V. For Belgian Relief Committee 

I . Kits for small children (full set of clothes) 

VI. For National League for Woman's Service (adults) 

1 . Two commissariat classes 

2. Motor classes with 30 enrolled 

Of course the Red Cross work need not be 
limited to girls and women. Boys under 14 are 
able to pick over oakum and to do other work that 
girls of the same age can do. The older boys 
can adjust and tend the knitting machines and 
pack and deliver the finished product. 

Men and women in many of the state institu- 
tions will be glad to contribute a share in service. 
Thomas Mott Osborne, while warden at Sing Sing, 
organized through the Mutual Welfare League a 
large class of men who enthusiastically gave up 
their evening periods of recreation in order that 
they might knit for soldiers in foreign fields. 

A number of young boys, none over 14, from 
Troy and Albany orphan asylums were taken in 
auto trucks 30 miles into the country to a currant- 
producing section, where they picked 5000 quarts 
of currants which had been donated to the county 



2o6 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

Red Cross organization. These currants were 
shipped in a refrigerator car 90 miles down the 
river to Yonkers, New York, where the girls made 
them into jelly and currant juice, the sugar being 
donated by a local refinery. 

Possibly the largest service that boys can render 
will be the making of Red Cross splints. As has 
already been stated in another chapter the Cana- 
dian schoolboys are doing a great deal of this 
work in connection with their manual training. 
An article in a recent issue of the Manual Train- 
ing Magazine describes in detail the work of the 
manual-training centers of British Columbia. These 
splints are made merely for first aid, and are used 
where it is not necessary that they conform exactly 
to the contour of the limbs or body. They are 
padded a little with cotton or cloth and fitted on 
the injured part of the soldier. 

A general conception prevails that Red Cross 
work is limited to battle-field relief, but it must 
be remembered that this organization also carries 
on civilian relief. It is very likely, as time goes 
on, that the schools will come to realize that there 
is probably no better agency than the Red Cross 
with which they can associate themselves in allay- 
ing the suffering and relieving the distress in the 
community. It must be remembered that the Red 



RED CROSS WORK 207 

Cross is splendidly organized, with its great central 
headquarters at Washington, its division head- 
quarters in larger groups of states, and its local 
chapters in every county. There is no activity of 
the Red Cross which a child cannot duplicate in its 
own sphere of life, and the American school may 
well become a center of interest in Red Cross work 
in time of war. One of the departments already 
organized is that of Home Service, which exists 
to help families maintain their standards of living. 
School-service work under a Junior Red Cross has 
been organized in order to bring the schools into 
direct touch with the work. The schools can give 
lessons in first aid, elementary hygiene, and home 
care of the sick, in home dietetics, and in the 
preparation of surgical dressings. It can make 
the necessary supplies for local soldiers who are 
in mobilization camps. It can make supplies for 
the soldiers' families, especially during the winter 
months. It can raise money by means of enter- 
tainments of an educational nature, and here op- 
portunities are often presented to correlate the 
work with history and English. In short, during 
the stress of war, with its rising cost of food, its 
industrial changes, its uncertainties in living con- 
ditions, with the home often handicapped by the 
withdrawal of the chief wage earner, there will be 



2o8 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

an excellent opportunity for the school to come in 
with its aid. The diet of the family, both in quality 
and variety, may be improved through the helpful 
advice of the teacher of home economics; children 
who are in need of medical care may be sent to 
the dispensary. The Home Service Department 
suggests that teachers may do helpful vocational- 
guidance work ; for in the absence of father and 
older brothers many a boy and girl can be helped 
by a teacher's encouragement to go into occupations 
where there is a future, where skill can be acquired, 
and where there is a chance for advancement. 

The following quotation from the London Times 
of some Red Cross work in France pointedly illus- 
trates what home and school service in the Red 
Cross movement may mean in America. 

The most detailed enumeration would hardly exhaust the 
activities of education in the common cause — voluntary 
contributions to the national funds deducted from the sala- 
ries of teachers ; liberal subscriptions from pupils ; partici- 
pation in the collection of gold ; the dispatch of packets to 
soldiers, and of books to the children of reconquered Alsace ; 
help given to orphans whom a school or class has taken 
under its charge ; manual labor on behalf of soldiers at the 
front, the wounded, the lame, and prisoners ; material or 
moral assistance to refugees ; a welcome given to all aban- 
doned children, Belgian or French, in the families of 
masters or of friends of the school; correspondence with 




Service recognizes no school grading. Girls of the lower grades are snipping 

waste pieces for fracture pillows and working with the older girls who are 

cutting hospital bed shirts, Troy, New York 



^ 




^ 

. ^ ^ 




r J 


■J l-^^H ' ^-^^tf^^^H^^^^^^^HII |: 


^H|| 


W^ ^ -^"II^h^HIbH 


piH 


f\ i I^HH 


H 



The new spirit of household arts in the schools is based upon the project 

plan and community service. War needs create new school practices. Troy 

(New York) girls at work on Red Cross supplies 




A country school need not be idle during the summer. This one housed a 
group of farm cadets 




Flying squadron leaving camp on an emergency call for berry pickers at 
Highland, New York 



RED CROSS WORK 209 

soldiers at the front, wounded, and prisoners ; attendance at 
the funeral of soldiers who have died of their wounds ; the 
public reception by schools, lyc^es, and universities of col- 
leagues or old pupils wounded, promoted, or quoted in dis- 
patches ; befriending soldiers who have no family to look 
after them ; the institution of workrooms for men and women 
who are out of work ; participation in the celebration of Bel- 
gian Day, the Serbian Day, the French Day, the Day of the 
75, the Day of the Orphans, and so on, — tasks which will 
have to be continued during the coming school year, because 
the need for them will still be present, and doubtless, for 
some of them at least, during the years immediately after 
the war, when the school will still have before it a splendid 
opportunity for social service. 

President Wilson has honored the school children 
of our country by a proclamation dated September 
18, 191 7, in which he calls upon them to do their 
part in the war by joining the Junior Red Cross, 
thus assisting in the mercy work of the senior 
organization. A portion of his message is quoted : 

The school is the natural center of your life. Through it 
you can best work in the great cause of freedom to which 
we have all pledged ourselves. 

Our Junior Red Cross will bring to you opportunities of 
service to your community and to other communities all 
over the world, and guide your service with high and reli- 
gious ideals. It will teach you how to save in order that 
suffering children elsewhere may have the chance to live. 
It will teach you how to prepare some of the supplies which 



2IO OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

wounded soldiers and homeless families lack. It will send 
to you through the Red Cross bulletins the thrilling stories 
of relief and rescue. And, best of all, more perfectly than 
through any of your other school lessons, you will learn by 
doing those kind things under your teacher's direction to 
be the future good citizens of this great country which we 
all love. 

Our President is a master of good pedagogy as 
well as a leader of men, and he expresses the very 
best in modern educational thought. He tells the 
children to think of their school as the natural cen- 
ter of their lives ; to serve the community in which 
they live; to reach out through service and study 
to the larger world outside; to have behind all 
action high ideals ; to save that others less fortu- 
nate may have; to learn how to do and through 
doing how to grow ; to learn directly of the world 
of action while it is in action ; to work with their 
elders for a common purpose, — the common pur- 
pose of being useful citizens of our great country. 



CHAPTER IX 

REEDUCATION OF THE DISABLED 

In all probability not one person in a hundred 
ever heard the word "reeducation" before reading 
the very recent newspaper accounts of the gov- 
ernment's plans as announced by Surgeon-general 
Gorgas for rehabilitating and reeducating the dis- 
abled soldiers. We have been in the habit of seeing 
blinded and crippled men selling lead pencils at 
street corners, and we have given our pity and our 
penny. We have seen the wonderful rugs woven 
by the blind (assisted in the designing and setting 
up by people who could see), and we have bought 
them, impelled by a sympathetic interest in a 
charitable cause. We have heard some exceptional 
person, who has overcome tremendous physical dis- 
abilities, describe her methods of studying college 
subjects and competing successfully with those 
who are unhandicapped, and we have said " How 
wonderful ! " and stopped thinking at that point. 

As a nation we have failed in our duty to make 
the physically handicapped economically self-sup- 
porting and normally strong. It is an educational 



212 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

problem as great as, if not greater than, that of 
assisting the mental defective. 

Only within two years have the vocational schools 
of our country even thought of instructing their 
pupils in the general principles of safety. Only 
since workingmen's compensation laws and indus- 
trial insurance have come into the foreground in 
legislative halls have public men considered the 
appalling need for "safety-first" instruction in fac- 
tories and in technical schools. 

For the duration of the war our thought of safety 
appliances for industrial life in peaceful times sinks 
into the background, and we think only of devices 
for preventing suffocation by poisonous gases, of 
means of withstanding liquid fire, of deflectors for 
bullets and camouflage for marching troops. But 
notwithstanding all these precautions, the inevitable 
results of war are before us. 

The multitude of men who have been injured 
in the present war is out of all proportion to the 
number injured in any war with which history or 
experience makes us acquainted, and the fitting of 
them to be economically self-supporting is a task 
of stupendous proportions. For the problem of the 
support of these men cannot be met entirely by pen- 
sions ; even if this were possible, the man would thus 
become a dead weight for the rest of the country 



REEDUCATION OF THE DISABLED 213 

to carry, an unenviable position from all points 
of view. In the case of the professional man, he 
may, even if handicapped, carry on his work; but 
the man with a trade, when maimed or blinded, 
must be taught some other vocation or be provided 
with some mechanical substitute for his loss in legs 
or arms and often with special tools and other 
apparatus which will enable him to carry on his for- 
mer occupation or a new one. It will not be possible 
to place all these men as ticket sellers, news vendors, 
gatemen, and in other positions hitherto appropri- 
ate for the industrially disabled ; and our vocational 
schools, the medical profession, and the national 
government must cooperate in a study of the 
reeducation of injured soldiers with the aim of 
putting them on the pay roll. 

On July 31, 191 7, announcement was made 
through the press of the United States that a 
government system for the rehabilitation and reedu- 
cation of men disabled in the fighting abroad would 
be made an adjunct of the proposed scheme for 
the federal insurance of soldiers and sailors, and 
that the plans for the rehabilitation of these men 
would probably, like those in Canada, be modeled 
after the systems in use in France and England. 
It is, of course, part of the government's duty to 
provide for the future of men crippled in its service. 



214 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

It is not the province of the several philanthropic 
agencies which in the past have commendably 
endeavored to care for the blind and the crippled 
by teaching them the handiworks of weaving, brush- 
making, etc. The work must be done on a sound 
and scientific basis, and be adjusted to economic 
conditions on a vast scale such as no philanthropic 
society can hope to maintain ; that is, it must not 
be relief work, it must be governmental construc- 
tive work in reeducation which shall teach the dis- 
abled man how to overcome the disadvantage of 
his infirmity in reentering the industrial world. 

To learn the extent of what may be done in this 
work of rehabilitation, England, Canada, and the 
United States look to France, — to the municipal 
vocational-training school for soldiers at Lyons 
known as L'Ecole J off re and the many schools 
patterned after it in other cities; to the Institution 
of St. Maurice, at Paris, which has been estab- 
lished by the French government to be a model 
for other institutions ; to the Laboratory of Research 
on Vocational Work, in Paris, directed by Dr. Jules 
Amar; and to the Anglo- Belgian hospitals, especi- 
ally that at Vernon. It has been announced that the 
United States will pattern its training school after 
the Institution of St. Maurice, which is a clearing 
house of experiments and research for the continent. 



REEDUCATION OF THE DISABLED 215 

There are also in France, as in England and 
Canada, convalescent homes for disabled soldiers, — 
many of which are supported by private benevo- 
lence, — where trades are taught. At the Institute 
of Les Amis des Soldats Aveugles, in the suburbs 
of Paris, the blind soldiers are taught the trades of 
basket-making, bootmaking, brush-making, netting, 
harness-making, and bookbinding, the course taking 
about six months before the pupils become profi- 
cient. The institution runs its own printing estab- 
lishment for literature in Braille (the print for the 
blind). The blind are peculiarly incapacitated, and 
the occupations open to them are consequently 
limited. Private benevolence has done much to 
lessen their economic misfortune, and the govern- 
ment must do more. Some French doctors believe 
that tobacco manufacturing and matchmaking are 
adapted to the blind because of their well-known 
delicacy of touch; many hospitals are giving them 
lessons in the art of massage, for the same reason, 
believing that the blind man can qualify for this 
employment in a few months. The work, how- 
ever, is still in the experimental stage. But the 
most progressive work in France has been done 
in the municipal and government training schools 
in equipping the maimed and crippled for work, 
and it is this of which this chapter will treat. 



2l6 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

The government institution of St. Maurice fol- 
lows the lead of the now famous L'Ecole J off re, 
which in turn learned much from a school at 
Charleroi, maintained before the war for victims 
of industrial accidents. L'Ecole J off re was the pio- 
neer which has blazed the way for the technical in- 
struction of the wounded. It was founded under 
the direction of the city of Lyons, with the mayor 
of the city, Edouard Herriot, most active in the 
undertaking, and Maurice Barres to spread its 
fame with winged words. To house it, an old 
disused chateau in a populous part of the city 
was put in order late in 19 14, and early in 191 5 
the men discharged from the hospital and pro- 
nounced suitable for training entered upon their 
course of instruction. The first one hundred 
cases received were restricted to those disabled 
but cured of wounds, the partially paralyzed, and 
those recovered from amputation. To direct the 
technical work. Monsieur Baseque, a professor in 
the industrial-accident school at Charleroi, was 
chosen. The success of the school was immediate, 
and by September another was opened in the 
outskirts of the city to accommodate 80 men. 

Naturally, at first, experiments were made, and 
the experience of L'Ecole J off re is most valua- 
ble to us. Three schemes were inaugurated : one, 



REEDUCATION OF THE DISABLED 217 

called placement a domicile^ where an allowance 
was made the man, who was to live in his own 
home while he entered a workshop to learn a 
craft of some sort ; another, la mode de V external, 
where the man pupil lived at his home or in 
lodgings while attending classes daily, receiving 
at the school at noon a canteen meal in order to 
save the time which would otherwise be taken in 
going home ; and a third, le regim.e de Vinternat, 
where he lived in the institution as a pupil in a 
boarding school. Experience developed that this 
last method was the only one which might be 
adopted with any assurance of success, the others 
subjecting the men to possible discouragement, 
through the jealousy shown by other shop workers, 
the necessarily slow progress, the inequality of pay, 
the varying degrees of instruction, and insufficient 
supervision. Canada too, after investigation, has 
found that the men throughout their training must 
live at the school and be under supervision, in 
order to avoid discouragement and the forming of 
bad habits of idleness and alcoholism, and to insure 
continuity of interest in their work. 

The condition of entrance to L'Ecole Joffre 
in Lyons is that the man must be pronounced 
permanently unfit for military service. Next he 
is examined to ascertain his fitness for industrial 



2i8 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

work, a matter determined by his freedom from dis- 
ease, his previous work, his general education and 
abiUty, the employment preferred, and the occupa- 
tions open. Whenever possible, the man is kept 
in his former employment. This principle is sound 
economically and psychologically, and must be 
adhered to in our schools. The employments for 
which training is given are bookkeeping, short- 
hand and typewriting, paper-stitching, bookbinding, 
toy-making, shoemaking, woodworking and draft- 
ing, tailoring, wood carving, gardening, and machine 
adjusting. Office work offers special opportunity 
to the one-handed and the crippled, as stenography 
and typewriting do to the blind. The course with 
commercial subjects, it was found, had to be care- 
fully restricted, for many without sufficient educa- 
tion wished to take it up, and there was danger of 
sending too many men into occupations already 
well supplied with competent workers. 

L'Ecole J off re is a municipal undertaking, a 
free school, the men pupils paying no board or 
tuition. It is in a measure subsidized, for the 
school receives from the Ministry of War a grant 
of 3 francs 50 centimes for each pupil for each 
day's attendance. The other funds to support the 
school are provided in various ways — popular sub- 
scriptions and grants by provincial organizations 



REEDUCATION OF THE DISABLED 219 

and other official bodies. As for the men them- 
selves, they do not, while in training, receive the 
government pension of i franc 70 centimes a day, 
but the school makes each man an allowance of 
I franc 25 centimes a day from its own funds, so 
far as they permit of such liberality. 

The work done by the city of Lyons has been 
followed in many localities, — Bourges, Bordeaux, 
Marseille, Rouen, and others, in most cases 
endowed by the municipalities. At Bourges addi- 
tional classes are held in silver-engraving, hair- 
dressing, and locksmith work. 

In the similar school in Marseille, tinsmiths, 
foundry workers, jewelers, and metal workers are 
trained. At Cluses, in 19 15, seventy partially dis- 
abled men were serving an apprenticeship in 
clock-making. This is sitting work, but it demands 
the possession of one hand and at least two fin- 
gers on the other, and an exceptionally good eye, 
so it is not so generally taught as other trades. 
At Cluny a course of training has been established 
for the former workmen who wish to become mas- 
ter workmen and designers ; that is, the school 
specializes in training those whose ability is above 
the average. 

It must be remembered that in French provinces 
there are many more hand processes in use than 



220 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

in the United States. Joinery and carpentry, for 
example, employ tools to make parts which in 
this country are turned out in factories. The 
industrial difference is evident in some of the 
photographs of the rehabilitated French workmen 
who are shown ingeniously at work with artificial 
" hands and arms " on processes for which there 
is no field here. Many French soldiers, too, find 
employment in toy making, a real industry for 
France and Germany, but one which is unlikely 
to be developed here to any extent. In America 
we must fit our disabled men to tend machines, 
and not make the blunder of preparing men for 
operations which are out of date in our standard- 
ized machine industries. In a very moving little 
book, " Les jeunes filles fran9aises et la guerre " 
(Jules Combarieu, Paris, 19 16), we read of a man 
who was employed in a joinery establishment after 
suffering the amputation of both hands. His left 
arm was furnished with a leather glove to which 
was adapted an ingenious instrument for holding 
nails. His right arm was fitted with another 
glove arrangement to which a hammer was at- 
tached. With the left he took the nails ; and 
with the right he pounded them into a piece of 
wood. Marvelous as the achievement may be, in 
America this workman would belong to the class 



REEDUCATION OF THE DISABLED 221 

for whom special relief workshops must be main- 
tained. Work in reeducation must naturally be 
adapted to the demands of the vicinity; the 
French towns of Nancy, Clermont, and Montpellier 
have not the industrial conditions of Pittsburgh, 
Worcester, or Birmingham. 

In Paris the model government institution of 
St. Maurice contains both a convalescent hospital 
and a training school for discharged patients. It 
has the advantage over L'Ecole J off re of uniting 
hospital and school, giving an opportunity of com- 
bining physical with industrial reeducation. It is 
therefore possible to have at St. Maurice, under 
the direction of Dr. Bourillon, physiotherapy by 
massage, electricity, medical gymnastics, and mech- 
anotherapy, which prepare the man for his reedu- 
cation. Dr. Bourillon affirms that this preliminary 
medical care reduces the effort which the patient 
must make to learn and exercise a trade. 

The French government also maintains at Paris 
the Laboratoire des Recherches sur le Travail Pro- 
fessionel, — an establishment for the scientific ex- 
amination of wounded men, particularly to ascertain 
the percentage of their disability in the labor mar- 
ket. The question of how many disabled men are 
capable of reeducation is one not rigidly deter- 
mined. There are, of course, some hopeless cases 



222 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

which will have to be entirely dependent on the 
government for their support, whether by pension 
or other means under discussion. But the figures 
of Dr. Jules Amar, director of this laboratory of 
industrial research, a man who has devised me- 
chanical apparatus for developing the capacities of 
injured limbs, show that of the maimed cases which 
have come under his observation at least 80 per 
cent are capable of vocational reeducation. Of this 
proportion 45 per cent succeed in earning normal 
salaries after a training including some specializ- 
ing; 20 per cent are partially restored to normal 
wage earning; while the remaining 15 per cent 
can only obtain work in shops maintained especi- 
ally for the disabled, such as a toymaking studio. 
Of the reeducation of this 80 per cent Dr. Amar 
says: "It is a question of science and method; it 
demands the organization of training schools. . . . 
It unites medical and technical knowledge to the 
end that artificial limbs shall be adapted to satisfy 
physical and vocational capabilities. The propor- 
tion of men dependent upon relief is then re- 
duced; and one must endeavor, without ceasing, 
to diminish it."^ 

The method in the Paris schools is scientific. 
"In the training schools," he continues, " the object 

1 Special Bulletin of Military Hospitals Commission, Canada, April, 1916. 



REEDUCATION OF THE DISABLED 223 

of the instruction is to supplement the dimin- 
ished physical capacity of the disabled man with a 
greater knowledge of his trade, superior technical 
instruction, or better vocational adjustment." 

The first responsibility falls on the medical ex- 
aminer. To reequip the maimed physically, an 
indispensable prosthesis (an addition of an artificial 
part to supply the missing member of the body) 
is made, the dynamical prosthesis — not the kind 
which replaces the member, but that which reestab- 
lishes or repairs th^ functions. What the wounded 
man needs is not an admirable imitation of the 
missing arm or leg, ingenious and often fragile 
appliances, but a practical working tool, — a socket 
into which a variety of tools can be fitted. 

Next, in the laboratory of the school an analysis 
of the workman's movements is made in relation 
to their regularity, direction, speed, and according 
to the force they expend. The measure of the 
man's physical incapacity is deduced from impres- 
sions gathered in this analysis, and from it the 
method of training must be devised. Furnished 
with his card of qualifications, the man passes from 
the hospital laboratory to the workshop, where ex- 
perts instruct him in theory and practice. The first 
thing to determine is whether a man cannot per- 
form the operations of his former trade. In many 



224 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

cases a man imagines that the disability caused by 
amputation of fingers, hand, or arm makes him 
unfit for the work he did previous to the war. 
But where the school is attached to a hospital 
and the man's disability can be accurately known, 
the union of medical skill and technical instruc- 
tion makes it possible to restore him to useful- 
ness with the minimum of effort and waste. 

Dr. Amar recommends for special relief work 
for the 15 per cent who are not capable of any 
great degree of reeducation, shops which will exe- 
cute orders for easily manufactured articles, involv- 
ing such processes as light cooperage, stamping, 
plaiting, toymaking, — work such as is offered at 
the shop in Rue de la Durance, Paris. 

Another institution whose methods are similar 
to those employed at St. Maurice and by Dr. Amar 
is the Anglo-Belgian Military Institute, at Port 
Villez, Vernon, under the technical director Major 
Haccourt. It accommodates over 800 men, and is 
self-supporting, the land where it is situated hav- 
ing been originally covered with forests, the sale 
of which financed the undertaking at first. Forty- 
three trades are taught here, and a large farm is 
maintained on which horses wounded in war are 
cared for and made useful. The workshops pro- 
vide for commercial courses, telegraphy, wall-paper 



REEDUCATION OF THE DISABLED 225 

designing, the manufacture of motor vehicles and 
electrical machinery of all kinds, plumbing and 
tinsmithing, rabbit and poultry farming, fur curing 
and dyeing, etc. The shops make fuse boxes for 
munitions, and various army supplies. At Vernon 
the men pupils are regarded as still in the Belgian 
army, receiving military pay; they have no option 
as to entrance, since they are under military disci- 
pline, but enter as soon as they are discharged 
from the Anglo- Belgian hospital at Rouen. In this 
school the services of the best professors in different 
trades are obtained without trouble, for the director 
can requisition any man in the Belgian army for 
any required purpose. Before the war Belgium had 
a large proportion of highly trained workmen ; and 
with compulsory reeducation and military discipline 
the operation of this institution is much simplified. 

In working out plans for reeducation in the 
United States we must have in mind certain prin- 
ciples. There is the necessity of making our train- 
ing thorough. Our problem will be not to find 
employment for the period of the war, during which 
there is a constant demand for workers, but to train 
the disabled for an occupation in which they can 
hold a place after the temporary shortage of labor 
created by the war conditions is over. It is obvious 
that if the men are incompetent and ill-prepared 



226 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

for their work, they will be weeded out as soon 
as skilled men are available. Their work is barred 
from that demanding manual strength; nor can it 
hope to belong to that highly specialized kind 
which would demand an arduous and elaborate 
training. But there is a wide range of semiskilled 
occupations where a handicapped man can earn 
more than if he should enter after a long course 
of training the highly skilled trade where he would 
meet the competition of the physically normal. 

There are at least three kinds of disabilities our 
schools will have to deal with. First, there is the 
man who has lost his right arm. This man must, 
whenever possible, be taught to use his left hand in 
his trade, although it is sometimes easier to learn 
a new process than to change right-hand to left- 
hand methods in the old operation. In carpentry, 
turning, and machine trades, however, the one- 
armed man may continue to be employed, and 
our vocational schools should incorporate courses 
in left-hand training. Here also we find another 
need: there must be built for the disabled left- 
hand machines. 

Next there is the case of the man who must be 
instructed in an allied trade because his former one 
is pronounced by medical examination and the 
tests of mechanotherapy to be impossible. And 



REEDUCATION OF THE DISABLED 227 

last there is the case of the man whose injury 
makes necessary the fitting of delicately adjusted 
prosthesis and a course of expert training before 
he can become a wage earner. 

Our chief difficulty in our work of reeducation 
will be to secure the right kind of teaching force, 
and it is clear that our government must establish 
schools to train our technical instructors how to 
adapt their knowledge of trade teaching to the kind 
of work demanded in giving instruction to the 
physically disabled. The selection of the proper 
type of teacher is vital to the success of any scheme 
of reeducation. The ideal instructor must not only 
know his trade but be able to suit his methods to 
the individual case so as to get the best response 
from each man under his direction. At present it 
seems as if there would be no way of training in- 
structors except by sending chosen trade teachers 
to St. Maurice to study the French methods, that 
they may return to this country properly equipped 
to select and instruct others, until such time as 
a government school of the right type is well 
established in this country. 

As for the schools themselves, they must be 
undertaken by the government, even if additional 
hospitals and laboratories for research are main- 
tained by private benevolence and bequest, for 



228 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

there should be no limit to the funds available for 
carrying on this work of the economic rehabilita- 
tion of the men injured in the service of the coun- 
try, and it must keep pace with the progressive 
work in France and elsewhere. Branch schools in 
municipalities may be organized under government 
control and subsidized by federal money. Some of 
our trade and vocational schools and their equip- 
ment may be taken over by the government for this 
purpose. Our trade and technical schools must 
also include courses in training teachers for this 
special work, the course to be supplemented by a 
special preparation prescribed by the government. 
In Canada the Military Hospitals Commission 
has made a careful study of the French and Anglo- 
Belgian treatment in the restoration of disabled 
soldiers, and has equipped the Central Military Con- 
valescent Hospital at Toronto with the mechano- 
apparatus similar to that used in France by 
Dr. Amar and Dr. Bourillon. Profiting by their 
observation of the foreign hospital schools, they 
have determined to consider the men in training 
as still in hospital and under military rule, for in 
Europe there is absolute unanimity of opinion that 
the influence of convalescent homes and benevolent 
support is bad, conducive to lax discipline and idle- 
ness. Canada has agreed that the earning power 



REEDUCATION OF THE DISABLED 229 

subsequently acquired by a pensioner in training 
will not lessen his pension. To pass upon the 
cases eligible for reeducation, Canada has a board of 
three: a member of the Provincial Advisory Com- 
mittee, a vocational officer, and a medical man, thus 
combining with technical and medical aid advice in 
the industrial choice and placement of the man pupil. 
Realizing that reeducation is a new idea to most 
soldiers and, indeed, to the public generally, Canada 
has put forth a propaganda of making popular the 
training courses. A bulletin has been posted con- 
spicuously in public buildings and a printed card 
circulated bearing the same information, " What 
Every Disabled Soldier Should Know." Aside from 
encouragement and directions of where to obtain 
help, etc., we find the following: 

That his strength and earning capacity will be restored 
in the highest degree possible. 

That if his disability prevents him from returning to his 
old work, he will receive free training for a new occupation. 

That full consideration is given to his own capacity and 
desires when a new occupation has to be chosen. 

That neither his treatment nor his training nor his 
transportation will cost him a cent. 

That his maintenance and his family's will be paid for 
during his training and for a month after. 

That his home province has a special commission to 
assist him in finding employment on discharge. 



230 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

To further the pubHcity of the work in Canada, 
moving-picture films have been prepared, system- 
atically illustrating the treatment and reeducation 
of wounded soldiers in England, France, and Can- 
ada, and showing their progress up to the stage 
of final recovery. These films have been shown in 
hundreds of theaters throughout the Dominion. 

It is encouraging that occasionally in France and 
Canada the vocational training in connection with 
hospitals places a man in a better position financially 
than before. The following examples are given out 
by the Canadian Military Hospitals Commission and 
are testimonials of the possibilities of rehabilitation. 

Letter received is from an ex-private in the 13th Bat- 
talion. Before enlistment he was getting ^12 a week as 
driver on a city milk round, " I always had a liking for 
drawing," he says, "and I felt that if I ever had the chance 
I would take up a course in mechanical drawing." This 
opportunity came to him at one of the commission's con- 
valescent hospitals. After six weeks' application to the 
work there, he was able to secure an appointment begin- 
ning with $75 a month, with good prospects of advance. 

A locomotive fireman had enlisted, was severely wounded, 
and had to have his left arm amputated. Under the com- 
mission's scheme of reeducation, which is offered to all men 
incapacitated for their former work by service, he received 
special training in telegraphy and railway routine. As a 
result he secured an appointment as station agent and 
dispatcher at ^iio a month. 



REEDUCATION OF THE DISABLED 231 

In England the high sheriff of Lancashire has 
formulated a scheme for listing the employments 
open to the disabled. First, the employer is asked, 
whenever possible, to give the returned soldier his 
old job. Next, certain employments are listed as 
being within the powers of partially disabled men, 
and with the help of labor exchanges and of other 
agencies, these are reserved for them. 

It is for the economic interest of the State to 
make possible the employment of the disabled. 
The amount of a pension is not the measure of the 
cost of the pensioner. The nation cannot afford to 
let any human power go to waste or lie idle. To 
reequip the maimed is to make him partly forget 
his infirmity, — an indispensable mental advantage. 
France is now discussing whether reeducation of 
one form or another shall be compulsory, as in the 
Anglo-Belgian hospital. " But obligatory or not," 
says A. L. Bittard,^ "the industrial reeducation 
must be above all a national work. We should 
regard it as a debt owed to the wounded and as 
an effective preparation for the future of the 
nation. . . . The State alone is capable of giving all 
the mutilated the maximum equality of treatment, 
where private initiative would be totally incapable 
of realizing the minimum." 

1 A. L. Bittard, Les ficoles de Blesses. Paris, 1916. 



232 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

The war simply makes the question of reedu- 
cating and rehabiHtating the disabled a striking 
one. But we must not forget that the problem of 
the injured is always with us. It may not be amiss 
to point out that 54,001 men and women were 
actually killed in the United States during the year 
191 3. This means one killed every ten minutes. 
Over 2,000,000 men and women are injured in the 
industries in the United States each year. This 
means one injured every sixteen seconds. The 
economic loss from accidental deaths and injuries 
is nearly $500,000,000 annually, and the loss from 
preventable accidents and diseases would more than 
pay the cost of maintaining all the public schools in 
the United States. These are appalling figures. 

At present the great fear of every boy who goes 
to war and of every sister and mother of such a boy 
is that he may go through life maimed and de- 
pendent. But we never think of the ever-present 
danger to these boys of being handicapped physi- 
cally by merely going to work; and yet there are 
more persons so disabled through accidents in indus- 
trial life in normal times than are disabled by war. 

When our boys come back from the war, physi- 
cally disabled, and through the government work 
in rehabilitation and reeducation are made self- 
supporting and self-respecting members of society, 



REEDUCATION OF THE DISABLED 233 

we shall begin to appreciate that we have been ex- 
tremely negligent in the past in limiting our efforts 
to help the crippled and blinded to the good offices 
of charity and philanthropy. It is a public matter. 
It is a problem of education. It is an opportunity 
for service for the teachers of vocational training, 
for the experts in vocational guidance and direc- 
tion, for the directors of placement and employment 
bureaus, and for the designers of special tools and 
machines for the handicapped. It is an imme- 
diate problem in this time of war ; it is even more 
significant in time of peace. 



CHAPTER X 

FARM CADETS 

We can afford only one fad in war time, and that fad is 
to be farming. It will be useless for little William Corning 
Smith, aged 12, of Kankakee, Illinois, to stick his little spade 
into his back yard before his admiring parent. Individual, 
unorganized work on land not properly prepared for agri- 
culture may be worse than useless ; it may be wasteful. 
Random efforts not coordinated in a general scheme for the 
utilization of school children in large units will be foolish, 
misdirected effort. State, county, and even national organ- 
ization are required to make available this latent power. 
Purely isolated effort will be fruitless, both as aids to the 
nation and education for the child. Organized work will 
bring the greater moral advantages of developing the power 
of concentration along with the interest in national and com- 
munity service. It will evoke an esprit de corps which may 
be capitalized for national use and shift the usual interest in 
gangs and athletics, both normal and natural, to work which 
opens the way to loyal industrial educational training.^ 

This was written by John Dewey early in the 
spring of 191 7 in a message addressed to the prin- 
cipals and teachers of America on how school 
children may be so organized for farm service as to 

1 Columbia University War Papers. 
234 



FARM CADETS 235 

Aid the nation ; 

Increase the food supply of the country in war time and 
during a world-wide shortage of food ; 

Conscript the national enthusiasm for athletics to national 
usefulness ; 

Assure a vigorous and healthy rising generation ; 

Reap the advantage of organized effort with its moral and 
educational results ; 

Develop constructive patriotism. 

As may be gathered, Dewey's idea was not only 
to organize the rural and village children for farm 
work but also to send the city children into the 
country in camps and tent colonies. He said 
further that the plan was not a dream and that 
it could be done. 

A friend in writing to me of his attempts in 
Massachusetts to make the dream a reality said, 
" It is like nailing a jellyfish to a board." Refer- 
ring to the difficulty of obtaining competent boys, 
on the one hand, and of convincing farmers of the 
value of city-boy labor, on the other, he further 
stated that it was a difficult proposition to sell 
something we did not have to somebody who did 
not want it. 

Few, if any, of us knew very much of the experi- 
ence, in this direction, of England, France, and 
Germany. To be sure, we had heard that France 



236 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

had attempted in a large way to use children at 
farm labor, but had given it up and had replaced 
them with old men, women, and partially crippled 
returned soldiers ; and we knew that with the alarm 
of the scarcity of labor and the diminishing number 
of the world's acres under cultivation England and 
Germany had called upon women and boys below 
military age to help meet the needs of the situation. 
But we in America did not realize, to quote Dewey 
again, " that we could enlist the school children in this 
work in such a manner that they could serve with 
results as beneficial to themselves as to the nation." 

Before considering in some detail the idea of 
using agricultural labor of children in America (and 
it is a subject worthy of elaboration, for even if 
the war closes to-morrow, we shall be short of farm 
labor for many years — perhaps always), let us see 
what England and Germany have done to utilize 
school children for farm work. 

In England many of the boys of 14 to 16 in 
the public schools have volunteered for vacation 
and holiday agricultural work in hoeing, planting, 
and harvesting; some of this was gratuitous labor, 
these boys coming from the prosperous classes 
and therefore being able to give their services. 

In July, 1 9 16, the Education Board published 
a report showing the number of children excused 



FARM CADETS 237 

from attendance at school for the purpose of agri- 
cultural employment in England and Wales on 
May 31, 1 91 6. The total number so excused was 
15,753, of which number 546 were between the 
ages of II and 12; 8018 between 12 and 13; 5521 
between 13 and 14, and of the remaining 1668 
cases the ages were between 12 and 14. Figures 
quoted relate solely to agricultural employment 
and do not show the full extent of withdrawals 
from school. They also relate to withdrawals of 
children who are not qualified for total exemption 
under the law. The report also states that " the 
board has no information as to the number of 
children who have been excused from school attend- 
ance for purposes of industrial employment or 
employment other than agriculture." 

Early in 191 7 several of the county education 
committees formulated plans for using the labor of 
children who were to be excused only for holidays, 
special periods, and part times, the general senti- 
ment being, even in the emergency, that no more 
children must be permanently excused for agricul- 
tural or industrial employment. These schemes 
are worthy of attention as endeavors to retain 
children in school, at the same time modifying 
the arrangement of the educational requirements 
to allow them to perform farm and garden work. 



238 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

The Education Committee for the Lindsay division of 
Lincolnshire considered, at a meeting held on April 13, 191 7, 
the desirability of taking steps to secure that the school 
holidays this year are fixed at such times as will enable the 
children to be of most assistance to the farmers, and it was 
resolved that the finance committee should be requested to 
consider the preparation of a scheme enabling managers to 
amend the school time-tables in such a way as will give the 
maximum of opportunity for the older children to work on 
the land during the spring and summer. . . . They further 
considered . . . that in view of the present emergency and the 
need of additional labor, especially in agricultural work, the 
board will give favorable considerations to proposals for 
extended or additional holidays in rural areas under certain 
conditions. Two schemes were presented, setting forth alter- 
native methods which managers might be authorized to 
adopt by which advantage can be taken of the concessions of 
the board, as follows : (i) A scheme to give a number up to 
eighty additional afternoons on which the older children can 
be employed on the land, managers to be informed that a 
school year of not less than 320 attendances will be accepted 
as fulfilling the requirements of the board, instead of a 
minimum of 400 as heretofore. On up to eighty days, older 
children, above prescribed age, may be released at noon for 
employment on the land, whilst the school will be open as 
usual for the younger children, and their attendance recorded, 
though not in the official register. (2) A scheme to allow 
up to eight weeks extra during which the older children 
may be employed on the land, managers to be informed of 
the number of attendances required as in scheme one. Older 
children, above a prescribed age, who are to be employed 



FARM CADETS 239 

on the land, need not attend school for a period up to eight 
weeks in addition to the ordinary holidays. The school will 
be kept open as usual during such weeks for the younger 
children, and those attending will have their attendance 
recorded, but not in the official register. Under either 
scheme it will be necessary for the managers to fix the 
period or periods for the year during which the scheme 
would be in operation, and in some of the larger rural 
schools it might be possible to release a teacher as well as 
the older children. 

At a meeting held on April 27 it was resolved to issue the 
schemes to the managers, impressing upon them the fact that 
the one object is to secure increased production of food.^ 

At Grimsby a committee was appointed to con- 
sider the employment of children on gardens, allow- 
ing an acre plot to each school, and 25 children, 
under a teacher, to work in cultivating it. All 
these children are required to attend school in the 
morning, and the consent of their parents must be 
obtained by them before they are permitted to 
begin afternoon work. Since, as in Lincolnshire, 
the aim of the work is increased food production, 
the crops derived from the cultivation of the land 
acquired by the town are to be divided among 
teachers and scholars engaged in the work. 

In Hull, also, the Educational Committee, besides 
encouraging work in school gardens, has authorized 

1 London Times, Educational Supplement, May 17, 1917. 



240 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

the labor of schoolboys in cultivating spare land in 
various places as a substitute for their usual manual 
training in the school shops. 

In Hertfordshire there are school gardens for the 
production of potatoes, parsnips, beets, and onions, 
with school instruction in gardening given the 
pupils. During the period for planting there is a 
schedule of half-time attendance. In Bradford the 
successful vegetable gardening is correlated with 
the school work in nature study, composition, arith- 
metic, and drawing, and emphasis is placed on the 
educational value of the productive work. 

It is difficult for America to see the food crisis as 
do the nations which are near the exhaustion point. 
While everyone must deplore the wholesale excus- 
ing of children to work without supervision, we 
ought to watch with interest all schemes which 
will increase production and yet will keep younger 
children in school for full time and will permit those 
older to work part time. This part-time work should 
be confined to the years of 14 to 18, except possibly 
in the case of work in the school garden, where 
younger children may labor for short periods. 

The appeal of Neville Chamberlain, the Director- 
general of National Service, in the spring of 191 7, 
for volunteers from such boys as were able to 
make the sacrifice, connects the need for agricultural 



FARM CADETS 241 

labor with the necessity for providing proper super- 
vision of the boys. His plan for utiHzing the labor 
of English schoolboys has many features similar to 
devices employed in Massachusetts, New York, and 
New Jersey. 

It is well understood that an abundant supply of labor 
for the land during the coming summer months is an urgent 
national necessity. Many schemes have already been organ- 
ized for the employment of soldiers, women, and prisoners 
of war, but it is desirable to form a reserve of labor so 
organized as to be available at short notice. For this 
reserve I turn to the boys at our public and other secondary 
schools. During the last two years many of them have 
given valuable help in hoeing, harvesting, and timber cut- 
ting, and at the present crisis I confidently hope that all 
for whom it is possible will make their services available 
both in summer holidays and, if necessary, during the 
coming term. I have accepted the offer of the Cavendish 
Association to place at my disposal their organization, 
which will act in conjunction with a committee — repre- 
sentative of schools and masters — having its headquarters 
at St. Ermin's, and working under the director of the agri- 
cultural section of this department. Full particulars of the 
arrangements and procedure will shortly be issued by the 
committee. The main points are as follows : 

(i) The age of the boys permitted to volunteer should 
not be below 16 except in the cases where the school 
authorities consider boys of 1 5 sufficiently strong to under- 
take the necessary work. (2) The boys will be organized in 
squads of varying sizes, each in charge of a master or other 



242 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

responsible person. (3) It is proposed that during term 
time the period of continuous whole-time service should not 
exceed two weeks. Every effort will be made to find work 
for schoolboy volunteers in the neighborhood of the school, 
but if the work lies at some distance from the school, rail- 
way fares will be paid and careful provision will be made 
for board and lodging. No boy will be expected to volun- 
teer for service during term whose school work is of imme- 
diate importance ; for example, a boy who is preparing for 
a scholarship examination. I recognize that this part of the 
scheme may present some difficulties to all but the large 
public schools, but I hope that some of the larger state- 
aided secondary schools may be able to join in it. Before 
doing so, however, they should communicate with the Board 
of Education. (4) In the holidays they will work for not 
less than three or four weeks, and it is hoped that, if neces- 
sary, they may have leave of absence from school until the 
end of September. (5) The whole working hours will be 
carefully proportioned to the average strength of each squad, 
and the wages adjusted accordingly. If the total sum 
earned does not meet the cost of living, the deficit will 
under special conditions be made up. 

I trust that when the call for boys' help comes, parents 
will recognize its urgency and will not hesitate to allow 
their sons to render this service for their country. 

In Germany there has been a systematic con- 
tribution from schools to agriculture since March, 
191 5. Authority was given to the respective school 
officials to grant the necessary leave of absence 
to older children for farm and garden cultivation. 



FARM CADETS 243 

With the increasing need of securing a sufficient 
supply of food for the nation, excuses of pupils from 
school increased. An additional service of pupils 
was required by an order issued on May 15, 191 7, 
relative to combating fruit and vegetable pests. 

Looking forward to future scarcity, Germany, with 
the help of the teaching staff and government 
leaflets, next enlisted school children in the work 
of collecting field and forest edible products. Chil- 
dren were engaged in the work of gleaning, and 
in the summer of 191 5 the gleanings amounted to 
approximately ^50,000, the greater part of which 
was turned over to the Red Cross as the children's 
contribution. In the summer and autumn of 191 5 
the children aided, too, in gathering fruits. During 
the following winter the schools gave instruction 
in the substitution of fruit products for fat and pro- 
teid. These were pointed lessons both in frugality 
and in public spirit. 

Additional requirement of the children's services 
was made when the continued scarcity of fats made 
it imperative to conserve acorns, horse-chestnuts, 
and seeds containing oil, the gathering of which 
was impossible without the aid of school children. 
An order of August 21, 191 6, authorized the em- 
ployment of children to take part in the extraction 
from trees in the state forests of resin needed chiefly 



244 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

for the paper industry; and in the same season 
children were called upon to engage in the collec- 
tion of kernels of cherries, plums, and apricots in 
enormous quantities for oil extraction. 

The school administrators and teachers of Amer- 
ica knew little, if anything, of the farm-placement 
ventures of European countries. But they were 
told most emphatically in the spring of 191 7 that 
the military force was but one factor in national 
organization, and that the ultimate decision as to 
victory might well be with the farmer. So in 
American fashion we started at it; New Jersey 
with its "junior industrial army," Massachusetts 
with its bronze-badged boy farmers, and New 
York with its "farm cadets." 

We all thought we were original, and perhaps 
we were ; and yet it is certainly not new for school- 
boys to work outside the school session when of 
proper age. Whether for the father or a neigh- 
borhood employer, boys 14 and over have worked 
in stores and gardens, in summer hotels, in offices, 
garages, and manufacturing plants. Nor is it un- 
usual, for that matter, to have the outside work 
coordinated with the school and receiving due credit 
in the curriculum. The cooperative high-school 
and vocational courses in many cities — Fitchburg, 
Beverly, Providence, Hartford, Indianapolis, Chicago, 



FARM CADETS 245 

and New York — are well known to those who are 
familiar with the extension and cooperative efforts 
of our vocational schools. 

Furthermore we are familiar with the two types 
of camps: the adult-labor and the recreation camp. 
The work camp is much the older, dating back 
to the building of railroads and the opening of 
lumber districts. In the past decade the recreation 
summer camps have become a potent factor in 
secondary-school life, making a complement of 
the school year's work by laying stress on the 
physical development of outdoor woodland and 
country experiences. Some of these camps, while 
primarily recreational, have had courses in manual 
training, college preparation, arts and crafts, and 
languages, yet so clearly is their play nature of 
chief importance that no one thinks of them as 
work camps. 

Now the farm-cadet movement involves the farm 
labor of the schoolboy, who is sent out and credited 
for his work by his school and is added to a camp 
life where in a squad of his fellow schoolboys he 
is looked after by an appointed leader as if in 
a Y. M.C.A. camp. Thus we have, out of familiar 
ingredients, a new compound, bringing into relation 
the boy, the parent, the supervisor, the employer, 
and the school. 



246 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

This agricultural movement in connection with 
the schools had its inception at the Philadelphia 
meeting of the Eastern Arts and Manual Training 
Teachers' Association early in 191 7. At once three 
Eastern states — Massachusetts, New Jersey, and 
New York — began to formulate plans for its oper- 
ation.-^ For it was not to be the simple expedient 
of excusing boys from school to work on farms, as 
has been the practice in many localities, but a plan 
whereby the boy was to be retained in the school 
system, substituting in his course during a portion 
of the year agricultural work for the academic and 
vocational studies of the regular curriculum. 

In analyzing the problem it was found that 
there were three types of boys to be considered: 
(i) the boy in a farming district, who could be 
employed on the farm of his father or a neighbor; 
(2) the boy in a town near an agricultural center, 
who could be employed within a radius of a few 
miles of his home and school ; (3) the boy from 
a city, who would have to be sent to distant farms 
and whose welfare would not be in the charge of 
his school principal and parents. The case of the 
first boy is very simple; the second is also easy 
of solution ; but if the third boy is to be used, 

1 California and Indiana developed plans about the same time. Before 
the first of July, 1917, the movement became quite general in America. 



FARM CADETS 247 

there will need to be a carefully worked-out plan 
for his placement, record of work, accommodations, 
and general welfare. It is for the third boy that 
the camp must be established, where he will be 
looked after by a responsible person who will see 
that he has the proper tent, board, work, and 
sanitary arrangements. 

The plans of the different states for utilizing 
boy power, while aiming toward the one desirable 
end of increasing our food production, have dif- 
fered widely in detail, owing to the variation in 
the compulsory-attendance laws, to the latitude 
exercised in some states in excusing boys pre- 
maturely, and to the varying degrees of investiga- 
tion of placement, record of work, and supervision. 
All states agree in giving the boy who is excused 
for farm work credit in his school work. Canada, 
too, excuses boys over 14 for farm work, allowing 
them full school credit for three months' labor. 
While it may be urged that it is not pedagogically 
sound to give credit in one subject for the work 
in another, a way out of the difficulty might be 
found in a rearrangement of the school year and 
vacations in districts where there is a large per- 
centage of excused boys; or special classes could 
be devised for these boys when they return to 
school. In the large high schools shorter intensive 



248 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

courses could be included in the program so that 
the boy who was preparing for college would not 
lose his work in such subjects as English, history, 
and mathematics. In the case of language and 
science there must be a loss which it is difficult 
to repair. If the present conditions persist, admin- 
istrative ingenuity can solve the question of work 
and credits. It is not one of the serious aspects of 
the problem, provided always that there is no release 
of children below the compulsory-attendance age. 

In Massachusetts the work of mobilizing school- 
boys for farm labor was in charge of the state's 
Committee on Public Safety. Their principles in 
acting were as follows: 

Mobilize the schoolboys ; keep those under 1 6 at home to 
work on home, school, and community gardens ; enlist the 
high-school boys between 16 and 18, too young for military 
or naval service, but old enough to render real service ; move 
them where farm labor is needed ; make them understand 
that enlistment for farm service is in all ways as patriotic 
as any other service for the nation's defense. 

With the appointment of a subcommittee to for- 
mulate the detailed scheme of placement and su- 
pervision, having Frank V. Thompson, Assistant 
Superintendent of the Boston schools, as chair- 
man, the plan for the cooperation of schools with 
agriculture is, for boys 16 and over, as follows i 



FARM CADETS 249 

1. {a) The farm-labor service is to be recognized 
by a bronze badge containing the seal of the com- 
monwealth and inscribed " The Nation's Service " and 
" Food Production." (b) An honorable discharge, 
similar to a discharge from the army, containing the 
signature of the governor, will be issued to boys 
who successfully complete their service on farms. 
(c) Tufts, Boston University, Massachusetts Insti- 
tute of Technology, and Massachusetts Agricultural 
College have agreed to give a trial term or year to 
such candidates as present an honorable discharge, 
without further entrance requirements, provided 
their school work was satisfactory up to the time 
of leaving and the principal so recommends. 

2. The existing school organization is used to 
conduct the enterprise. For each 25 boys enlisted 
a supervisor is appointed, a male teacher of strong 
ability in the local school, — in towns where there 
are several supervisors, either the superintendent 
of schools or the principal of the high school. 
A general head supervisor in charge of the state 
work has an office in the Statehouse. Each local 
head supervisor and each supervisor of 25 boys 
receives the same sum (^100), the money being 
obtained from a local contingent fund, from an 
additional appropriation, or by subscription. 

3. The minimum wage of the boys is fixed thus: 



250 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

first week, no wages, but allowance of ^2 for ex- 
penses etc. ; thereafter {a) boy living on farm, not less 
than $4 a week and board, {b) boy living at home, 
not less than $6 a week. Six days constitute a week. 

4. The enlistment card and the issuance of 
honorable discharge are controlled by the general 
head supervisor (Committee on Public Safety). 

5. The enrollment for the period of May i to 
October i is made by the boy, with the parents' 
consent and the school physician's indorsement. 
When the boy is enlisted, a numbered badge is 
lent to him, for which he signs a receipt; it is 
to be returned in case of unsatisfactory conduct 
or service. He receives full credit for the year's 
school work. 

6. Inspection of the physical and moral condi- 
tions of the place of employment, the choosing of 
the boys from enrollment lists, and seeing that 
both boys and farmers are satisfied, are part of the 
work of the appointed supervisors. 

7. Camps for the boys, when local conditions 
require, are established under the direction of the 
medical expert for the State Board of Labor and 
Industries. An expert on camps has supervision 
of the work of the executive committee in stand- 
ardizing and inspecting camps and obtaining the 
equipment, layout, and food supplies. 



FARM CADETS 251 

With the cooperation of farm bureaus thousands 
of circulars and labor-contract forms were sent to 
Massachusetts farmers. By June 16, 191 7, there 
were camps established at 18 points, and arrange- 
ments completed to employ 500 to 600 boys from 
these camps. In addition there were at least 500 
other boys released from school to work on home 
farms, or living in farmers' homes. 

An interesting feature of the Massachusetts 
scheme was the working out of camp plans by the 
drafting students in the Newton Technical High 
School, with detailed equipment of dining tent with 
wooden-horse tables ; sleeping tent with double-deck 
bunk ; latrine ; cook shack ; etc. 

In its system for handling the supply of boy 
labor, the state requires the farmer to sign a defi- 
nite application blank for the amount of boy labor 
which he requires. It is understood that while 
the boys are enlisted for the entire period up to 
October i, the farmer may take those boys for 
long or short periods of not less than a week in 
duration, to begin or end at any time, as the 
farmer's necessity requires. This application made 
by the farmer is also an agreement to pay the 
wages stipulated by the Committee on Public Safety 
and also to employ the boy on rainy as well as 
fair days, using his services on rainy days under 



252 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

cover if possible. Further agreement is made, in 
case the boy is unsatisfactory, to give him one 
week's notice or one week's pay, providing him 
with a statement in writing of the reason for his 
discharge. Whenever, in the opinion of the local 
supervisor, the conditions of living or of labor are 
not satisfactory, the boy may be withdrawn without 
prejudice to him. These arrangements insure that 
there shall be a cooperative responsibility of farmer 
and state in caring for the boy. 

In establishing the camps in Massachusetts the 
money to start the work was chiefly supplied by 
individuals. In the case of the New Bedford con- 
tingent in Coonamesett camp, on an estate of 
ii,ooo acres, the boys were housed in mihtia tents, 
lent by the state, — two boys to a tent. For their 
tent furnishings the boys supplied whatever they 
needed. A mess house — a rough board building 
75 feet long by 17 feet wide, providing eating 
quarters for the boys and at one end a cook room 
— was in part erected by the New Bedford Indus- 
trial School boys, working under the direction of an 
experienced carpenter. The laying of the 2500 feet 
of pipe to carry water to the camp was also the 
work of the same school. The catering for the 
boys was under the direction of an experienced 
woman and two Japanese cooks. In the morning 



FARM CADETS 253 

the boys started for the various farms, those at a 
distance being called for by an auto truck. In this 
camp, for an eight-hour day and a six-day week 
each boy received a maximum wage of $4 a week 
and board, the weekly payment in charge of the 
supervisor. The camp was fortunate in having as 
its directors the city superintendent of schools and 
a physical instructor, the latter living in the camp. 

In New York the placing of boys on farms has 
been the joint work of the Food Supply Com- 
mission, the State Education Department, and the 
State Military Training Commission. While younger 
boys have been released for agricultural work by 
other agencies, the state placement by the com- 
mission is concerned only with the boys of military 
training age — 16 to 19. One of the first actions 
of the latter commission was to divide the state 
in^o 6 military-training zones: New York City (in- 
cluding Manhattan, Bronx, and Richmond); Long 
Island, including Brooklyn ; Hudson Valley, with 
center at Albany ; East Central, at Syracuse ; West 
Central, at Rochester; and Western, at Buffalo. 
Next, a description was obtained of the character 
of the work in each zone. For example, the Hudson 
Valley Zone as far as Albany requires labor in 
harvesting small fruits and general farm work, 
while the West Central Zone work is that of muck 



254 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

farming, large-fruit farming, and general farming. 
Each zone center has its individual ofEce through 
which placements are made. Meetings were held 
the latter part of April by zone supervisors and 
farm-bureau managers, and attended by farmers' 
and fruit growers' associations who stated what 
they needed and what they would contribute in 
wages and housing for boy workers. 

The inducements for enlisting offered by the state 
to boys released from school work were the chevron 
given by the Military Training Commission, to be 
awarded after thirty days' satisfactory work; the 
military-training-equivalent value of the service; and 
the promise of proper pay and care by the employer. 
As to credits, so important in the New York 
system, farm cadets were permitted to take the 
Regents' examinations though the course lacked a 
few weeks of completion, the time requirement be- 
ing waived in their case. Any pupil in the schools 
of the state who enlisted for military service 
(this applied to the colleges) or who rendered 
satisfactory agricultural service was credited with 
the work of the term without examination, on the 
certificate of the school that his work up to the 
time of enlistment was satisfactory. 

New York is an agricultural state, with a great 
variety of kinds of farming and many districts 



FARM CADETS 



255 



remote from centers of the supply of labor. The 
agricultural census, to which reference was made 
in Chapter II, supplied data for determining the 
districts where and when labor was most needed 
and where schoolboys could be most useful. For 
example, in Orleans County, in the Western Zone, 
the demand varied from 163 laborers needed early 
in May to 1521 needed in October, an indication 
that there was really more reason for excusing boys 
in October than in May for work in peach- and 
apple-harvesting districts.^ Conspicuous among the 
types of New York farms where labor was sought 
were the great fruit farms, such as the Sodus Fruit 
Farm, with a house on the shore of Lake Ontario 
able to accommodate 100 boys, where it was planned 
to harvest the entire peach and apple crop with 
schoolboy labor; the vast tracts owned by the 
canning companies, with thousands of acres of 



^ The following statistics for Orleans County show how agricultural 
help is needed, as indicated by the census taken by school children : 



May 10-20 163 Aug. 21-31 

May 21-31 165 Sept. i-io 

June i-io 227 Sept. 11-20 

June 11-20 257 Sept. 21-30 

June 21-30 271 Oct. i-io . 

July I-IO 518 Oct. 11-20 . 

July 11-20 526 Oct. 21-30 . 

July 21-31 523 Nov. I-IO . 

Aug. I-IO 486 Nov. 11-20 

Aug. 11-20 554 Nov. 20-30 



573 
"57 
1308 

1317 
1521 
1500 
H3S 
38 
13 

X 



256 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

tomatoes, beans, and corn under cultivation; and 
the farms such as those in the South Lima district, 
where there was muck farming and where the 
work included the cultivating, sorting, and pack- 
ing of onions, lettuce, celery, and spinach. Calls 
were sometimes made upon the state for as many 
as 1500 boys to assist in harvesting. It was there- 
fore necessary for the state to work on a large 
and definitely planned scale. 

Naturally the first boys to be placed were those 
residing in or near farming districts. When, how- 
ever, the supply of these boys was exhausted, the 
call came, even from remote districts, for city boys. 
In these cases the problem of transportation be- 
comes serious, as well as the housing and care of 
the boy in the new environment, where association 
with other help is apt to be harmful. 

The following description of a New York State 
camp is offered not only because it has proved to 
be highly successful but also because it affords 
an excellent illustration of the " farm-working, or 
labor-distributing, camp," which is defined in the 
chapter following. 

It was called The Erasmus Hall High School 
(New York City) Potato Growers' Association, and 
was organized by F. A. Rexford, a teacher who is 
much interested in agriculture and in boys. 



:!?«^ 





Working and living in the berry fields. One of twenty-five camps in the 
Highlands of New York State 



Agriculture on a Western basis brings lessons in organization, cooperation, 

and economy to Eastern boys. City boys working on a large farm near 

Phoenixville, Pennsylvania 




Employing able-bodied boys of city high schools for farm production may 

become permanent. It may lead to the development of country annexes to 

our city schools. Camp near Phoenixville, Pennsylvania 



FARM CADETS 257 

The object of the association, which was formed 
in the school, was originally fourfold: (i) to teach 
the farmer that the alert city boy can and will 
perform agricultural tasks; (2) to increase the food 
supply; (3) to relieve the help situation by organ- 
izing a group of boys to work by the hour or 
day, and to recruit boys to work by the month 
for individual farmers under supervision ; (4) to fit 
boys for military service if needed. 

Ten boys from the school left New York on 
May 5, each armed with the money necessary to 
pay such expenses as carfare, food, laundry, rent of 
an acre of land, seed potatoes, phosphate, team hire, 
and spraying materials. They went to Mr. Rexford's 
farm, located up-state. The New York Tribune con- 
tributed some money, and one of the teachers in 
the school advanced $60 for the boys to grow 
potatoes for him. Some frail boys, whose parents 
wanted them to go for their health, were refused. 

At first the farmers were skeptical. The boys, 
however, went to work on the land which they 
had rented from Rexford. In a week they began 
to attract attention and farmers began to hire 
them. Rexford knew some of these farmers by 
reputation. He believed that men who cannot 
keep their own boys at home cannot succeed with 
boys from the city. He was in the habit of having 



258 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

a straight talk with the employing farmers, telling 
them that the boys must be treated squarely. 

A large milk-distributing corporation offered to 
take every one of his boys, but he argued that it 
could afford to hire men and did not need boys, 
as did the farmers who could not obtain other help. 
It is evident that large farmers have capital and 
backing, while it is the individual farmer struggling 
with hard conditions who must have help. 

Most of the boys who are with farmers by the 
month come back to the main camp every Sunday 
morning for physical examination, general assem- 
bly, and to go to church.. This coming back to the 
camp keeps before them the idea of a camp for 
farm cadets. They return to their work Sunday 
night. For those boys who go out by the week 
the teacher makes an arrangement whereby the 
farmer brings them back to the camp on Saturday 
night and comes for them the following night. 

The people in the community in which the camp 
is located have established a nonsectarian church 
in an old cheese factory which has been purchased 
for ^200. Occasionally a minister from a near-by 
town comes and speaks. 

The camp has a professional cook, who was 
obtained from a college fraternity, and the boys 
pay pro rata. The first expense was about ^2.50 



FARM CADETS 259 

a week for each boy, but prosperity has provided 
means for the boys to spend more. 

All vegetables which the boys raised and which 
they did not use on the table were canned by 
the cook and Mrs. Rexford, and they will be used 
in the early part of next year, before the fresh 
vegetables are available. 

Local store men have cooperated in giving the 
lowest prices, feeling that otherwise the trade of the 
camp would go to the city, and therefore choosing 
the opportunity of large business with aggregate 
large receipts on small profit. 

Breakfast consists of fruit, cereal or eggs, and 
milk, cocoa, or postum, and sometimes corn bread 
or griddle cakes. The boys carry a cold lunch 
with them, consisting of a pail of cold cocoa; 
four good thick sandwiches of peanut butter, meat, 
or jam ; a piece of frosted cake ; and a banana. 
Sometimes they take a pot of jam, which is dis- 
posed of by the group. For dinner they have a roast 
or steak; potatoes and other ordinary vegetables 
(beans, peas, lettuce, carrots); shortcake or pie or 
pudding; cocoa, postum, or milk. 

The boys take care of their own beds, wash 
the dishes, and keep the place clean. 

They have a study hour every evening from 
eight until nine, and the same is true of the boys 



26o OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

placed out with farmers. One boy, going to 
Princeton in the fall, kept up his studies and took 
the Regents' examinations at the country school, 
passing them with as good a mark as he would 
have obtained at his home school. 

After drill on Sunday morning the boys at 
camp have a baseball game. They have had 
entertainments for the benefit of the Red Cross. 
In the group at camp are the gold-medal orator 
of the school, two excellent pianists, four man- 
dolin players, and a whistler. All the boys are 
good singers. 

Rexford's application blank asked for the weight, 
age, previous experience in farming, church pref- 
erence, and habits as to smoking. 

The teacher had the cooperation of the farm 
bureau. The farmers wrote to the bureau for help ; 
Mr. Rexford and the farm-bureau manager went 
to each farmer, looked over the situation, and if 
everything was satisfactory, furnished the workers. 
Mr. Rexford will not leave boys on any farm 
without proper supervision. He visits the boys 
once every week, neither the farmer nor the boy 
knowing when he is coming. 

At first no wage scale was set, the arrange- 
ment being that the farmer should pay what the 
boy was worth. If he was worth nothing, then it 



FARM CADETS 261 

was all right, and the boy ought to be the first one 
to know it. However, most of the boys started 
at 20 cents an hour; soon this was raised to 25 
cents, and now the pay is 30 cents. 

Most of the farmers in the vicinity had never 
done any spraying. They now apply to Mr. Rexford 
when they want such work done and he sends out 
two boys and horses and his own spraying outfit. 
The work is done at a cost to the farmer of 
about 70 cents per acre for spraying potatoes, in 
addition to the material; that is, 25 cents per acre 
for each boy's work and 20 cents expense on the 
spraying outfit, for nozzles etc. 

There was no illness among the boys during the 
summer, not even colds. Sometimes the boys got 
wet through, but came home, took a dip in a hole 
in the creek, and followed it by a good rub. 

Meanwhile quite a number of New York City 
men teachers under the leadership of two camp 
supervisors, H. W. Millspaugh and H. J. McCreary^ 
and acting under the authority of the Board of 
Education, started out "to sell something they did 
not have to somebody who did not want it." But 
these men had the courage of their convictions 
and the results of their work (over twenty camps 
in two counties) give ample evidence of the success 
of their venture. 



262 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

Imagine the surprise of the fruit growers of the 
counties named when they received the following 
circular letter: 

It is proposed to bring a large number of boys from the 
high schools of New York City to pick fruit in the fruit 
belt of Orange and Ulster counties. In carrying out this 
plan it will be necessary to have the full cooperation of 
fruit growers, school authorities, parents, health authorities, 
and others. The part of the fruit grower will be roughly 
as follows : 

He will provide housing facilities, stove, fuel, refrigera- 
tion, either by ice box, cellar, or spring, convenient water 
supply, toilet facilities satisfactory to the board of health, 
straw for mattresses, cooking utensils, working conditions that 
will enable the average boy to earn a respectable wage, and 
a sympathetic attitude toward the comfort and health of the 
boys. 

Each boy will provide his carfare to and from the fruit 
section, provide his own knife, fork, cup, plate, spoon, wash 
basin, tick for mattress, pillow, blankets, etc., and pay for 
his food and cooking. Boys will mess in groups of 12 to 
25 or even more. Each group will have a capable boy cook 
and in camps of over 20, two boys. The first boy will re- 
ceive $4 a week besides his meals, the second boy ;^2.50 a 
week and may earn some more by picking fruit. A teacher 
supervisor will supervise one large or two or three small 
camps and advise as to preparation of food, buy supplies, 
and act as camp director. 

Regarding cooking outfit to be supplied by the fruit 
grower, it may be said that all except stove and ice box can 



FARM CADETS 263 

be purchased new for about ^10. It is desirable that these 
be ordered by the camp director, who will judge the size and 
kind and take advantage of wholesale rates. An oil stove 
and oven is recommended unless a suitable stove is on hand. 
Inexperienced boy cooks cannot be expected to satisfy a 
score or more of hungry boys with equipment discarded by 
the skilled housewife. 

It is further understood that these boys will not work on 
Sunday nor will they be located on farms where farm help 
is not treated with consideration. 

An illustration of a "concentration and training 
camp " is that established by the state of Maine. 
This state, in cooperation with the state Young 
Men's Christian Association, developed a state 
camp for the purpose of enlisting and training 
boys and young men to supply the extra demand 
for farm labor made necessary through the in- 
creased-acreage propaganda. The boys were or- 
ganized under the title of "The Junior Volunteers 
of Maine." They were virtually farm soldiers of 
the state, and were sworn to obey all rules of the 
camp before and after leaving it for the farms on 
which they were placed. 

The boys are sent out in squads to work in 
different sections of the state, as opportunity may 
offer, under the direction of competent adult leaders. 
These leaders have full charge of the boys until 
they return to the mobilization camp. 



264 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

When a boy comes to the camp he is examined 
for his moral and physical qualifications, and then 
is assigned to a company and to a tent. The 
adjutant general provides necessary tents, uniforms, 
and camp utensils. The boy is instructed with 
others in the squad how to pitch a tent and pack 
camp utensils, and he is also given lessons in 
sanitation and the elements of military drill. He 
has a lecture every day given by a professor of 
the state agricultural college. He also works on 
the Y. M. C. A. farm, which is being used for this 
purpose, and is taught the use of machinery, and 
how to manage and care for horses, sharpen tools, 
and milk cows. 

It is not claimed that a week of this sort of 
training makes the boy a finished farmer, but it 
does go a long way in that preliminary educa- 
tion so essential to farm-mindedness. By the time 
the boy gets to the farmer he is in excellent 
shape to understand the orders of his employer. 
In the words of the director of the camp, "He is 
ready to begin actual service as a trained novice." 

Before the boy is admitted to the camp a 
searching examination is made into his character 
and antecedents, and some responsible person 
must answer certain confidential questions relative 
to the boy's physical, mental, and social habits. 



FARM CADETS 265 

After the boy is admitted to the camp he takes 
an oath in which he states that he will serve as 
a junior volunteer for farm service in Maine until 
the last day of October, unless sooner released by 
the governor of the state of Maine. 

A charge is made on the farmer of $1 a day for 
each of the six working days, and it is expected 
that if the boys show themselves worthy of more, 
the farmer will recognize this and make a satis- 
factory adjustment with the leader. In addition 
to the minimum charge of ^i a day the farmer 
is required to furnish board. As a rule, however, 
the boys sleep in near-by tents with their leaders. 
The farmer is not required to pay transportation 
or other charges. 

The farmer's agreement is with the state and not 
with the boy, as the scheme works on the basis that 
the young men have been engaged by the state for 
farm service and as employees of the state receive 
their pay through the regular state channels. 

On the first of July more than 450 boys had been 
trained and sent out to various points in the state. 

The following letter from the director-general 
of the camp gives in a word his experience with 
these boys: 

We feel that this movement can be justified from any 
one of a half-dozen standpoints. We are taking city boys 



266 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

and in a few weeks giving them a few carefully selected 
fundamental principles relating to practical farm activities, 
which has enabled them to go out to the farms under our 
leaders and give satisfaction. We have not had a single 
complete failure yet. Only 3 boys out of 600 employed 
for the season have been changed because they could not 
fill the requirements. The way these city boys have taken 
hold of farm work has been wonderfully gratifying. In 
connection with this training, we are conducting our camp 
along lines similar to camps of National Guardsmen. The 
whole organization is nearly identical with the regular army 
camps. While the training is not so extensive, the boys 
are given the fundamentals in correct form. The spirit 
and general training at the camp will be of great value if 
any of these boys are ever called into the service. 

Another important possibility, and from my experience 
with city boys, a probability, is that some of these boys will 
become sufficiently interested in agriculture to choose it as 
a vocation, while others will choose it later in life as an 
avocation, because of this experience. 

Another mobilization camp of the " labor-distri- 
bution " type, with some training features, v^^as that 
of the Long Island Food Reserve Battalion. This 
organization was initiated by the Nassau County 
Y.M.C.A. and supported financially and morally 
by the Long Island Railroad, the state agricultu- 
ral school at Farmingdale, and by local residents. 
A detailed description is unnecessary. There were 
6 camps under this organization scattered over 



FARM CADETS 267 

the island, in each camp 48 boys under a supervi- 
sor, a miHtary instructor, and squad leaders (i squad 
leader to approximately every 7 boys). The last 
camp was developed at the state school of agri- 
culture with a group of 96 boys working in two 
shifts, one beginning at 6 a.m. and stopping at 
12 noon; the other beginning at 12 noon and stop- 
ping at 6 P.M. A regular course of agricultural 
instruction was carried on at all the camps. Lec- 
tures have been given in entomology, farm chemis- 
try, and marketing. During the first month of the 
first camp it was difficult to place the boys. The 
idea was not well received by the farmers, who 
claimed that the presence of boys would " demor- 
alize " their regular help, and that the boys would 
not recognize the different vegetables and would 
hoe out corn as quickly as they would pigweed. 
(One boy in a New York State camp did carefully 
hoe out and pull up every corn plant for a half-day, 
leaving weeds.) 

During the height of the season these same 
farmers were driving to the camps and offering from 
^2 to $2.50 a day for the same boys that they had 
laughed at hiring for ^1.25 a day at the beginning 
of the installation of the camps. 

The " flying-squadron " idea is unique. An auto 
truck, with a trailer for tentage and supplies, is 



268 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

always ready to respond with its load of boys to an 
emergency call to save some particular crop. The 
group composing this squadron is made up of 
" hand-picked " boys who are qualifying for squad- 
leader positions. 

An example of a camp which was conducted in 
such a manner that the boys lost the minimum of 
school work is that of the Bush wick (Brooklyn, 
New York), High School " Camp Squire " near 
Hicksville, Long Island. The organization of this 
camp is interesting, not so much because it was 
established with the purpose of making it self- 
supporting, but rather because it provided definite 
opportunities for continuing with school studies. 
The initial amount of about ^175 was subscribed 
by teachers, and the tent and mess house, intended 
formerly for harvesters, was lent by the farmer on 
whose grounds the camp was placed. The leader 
of this camp, a teacher in the same school from 
which the boys were recruited, planned, after the 
schools opened in September, a day of work and 
study, coaching the boys in their school subjects, 
so that with at least three hours of study per day 
the boys were enabled to keep up with their 
classes while at work harvesting until the middle 
of October. In this, as in other successful camps, 
the boys formed a unit organization before going 



FARM CADETS 269 

to camp, and had the advantage of a sympathetic 
instructor of academic and agricultural experience 
to enforce voluntary school discipline. The boys 
were paid 20 to 25 cents an hour, working for 
neighboring farmers from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. The 
rest of the day was divided into silent study, con- 
sultation, and recreation hours. It is expected that 
this camp, which will doubtless be permanent, will 
become self-supporting in its second or third year 
and the initial outlay will be returned. 

The farm-camp idea is here to stay. Of that we 
are sure. The purely recreational camp is a thing 
of the past. The days of the purely work camp of 
ten to twelve hours a day ought to be over. Work, 
play, and study in the future will be brought to- 
gether in the summer time as effectively as during 
the so-called "regular" season. Next year, and in 
the years after, we shall organize this work around 
some educational ideal and not merely around a 
necessity for food-production. The two are by no 
means incompatible. 

This year we have learned " how not to do it," 
as one camp leader put it. In some instances the 
boys went home with less money than they had 
at the start. In brief they paid the farmer for the 
privilege of picking berries. Particularly in berry 
picking there was much piece work, and such may 



270 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

carry with it nearly all the evils that it does in the 
factory. Mr. Keller, a thoughtful leader of a New 
York camp, says in this connection: " Judging the 
fair wage from the earnings of the expert is mani- 
festly unfair. It means that the average boy must 
be speeded up beyond his point of endurance, or 
that he must receive less than a living wage. The 
possibilities of speeding up are limited, and so 
the alternative is longer hours." 

Furthermore it is necessary for the government, 
state or national, to take a hand in the distribu- 
tion and the sale of farm products. It made me 
sick at heart, on a trip of inspection to 25 camps, 
to see hundreds of boys at work picking berries 
under the hot sun in a service supposedly patriotic, 
and then to see the same berries, which had been 
sold by the growers at a price not much above that 
of other years, resold to the consumer at double 
the price of other years, — and always with the 
remark : " You know labor is scarce this year, and 
the farmers cannot get help." The result of it all 
has been that the consumer, for whom the work 
was done, has been disregarded. 

From the point of view of social reconstruction, 
education, food production, and conservation only 
the surface has been scratched. The state must take 
the initiative, assuring the consumer a moderate 



FARM CADETS 271 

price for the product, and the farmer, the dealer, 
and the boy a fair return for their service. 

The boy is not merely a labor unit in the conser- 
vation of food. He is the essential feature of an 
educational program. The experience of the past 
summer proves that with centralization, organiza- 
tion, and an educational vision as fundamental sub- 
divisions of a far-sighted state policy the placing 
of boy labor on farms could become a valuable and 
permanent by-product of the war. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 

In organizing camps for supplying cadet labor 
it is well to keep in mind that they are to be estab- 
lished on the basis of a business proposition; that 
they are not primarily play camps or recreational 
camps; that they are not to be located on a river 
or lake because there happens to be a good place 
for boys to swim, if there are not paying jobs near 
that river or lake on which the boys may work; 
that they are not to be established at random with- 
out reference to the continuity of work during 
the season, or without any real knowledge of the 
local demand for labor. 

Out of considerable experience during the past 
year it has been discovered that there are three 
great elements; first, the boy; second, the farmer; 
and third, the job. In addition there are the ele- 
ments of leadership, of housing, and of cooking. 
Of course there must also be considered the ele- 
ments of recreation, religious observances, and the 
general social life of the camp. 

With reference to the boy it would seem that 

he ought to be one of a group which belongs to 

272 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 273 

a public-school system, or to an institution, or to 
some society or organization which is ready to coop- 
erate in placing him in a farm camp. We are 
hardly prepared as yet to take individual boys, 
unassociated with any organization, and bring them 
together in a camp where the lack of unity will 
give the leader little hold. A number of boys 
from New York City were picked up at random 
and sent out to a distant place up-state under the 
direction of a leader who had never seen them 
before. The boys had not met one another until 
they were put on a train in New York. Not 
coming from any single school or organization, 
they felt no particular responsibility to anyone. All 
they knew about the proposition was that they 
were to go to a certain place, where they would 
be met by someone who was to conduct them to a 
camp. They were undisciplined and later proved to 
be unmanageable. At the very start the plan lacked 
that coordinating influence which would have ex- 
isted if the leader had been a teacher in a school 
from which these boys had come as one group, or 
if a Y.M.C. A. boys' secretary had organized a group 
from his association. Of course, some day a way 
may be found to bring together a group of boys 
independent of previous association and place them 
in a new environment in about the same way that 



274 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

adult labor is gathered up in the streets of New 
York and shipped by employment agencies to some 
distant point. But boys are not men. The re- 
sponsibility of sending a more or less irresponsible 
youth to a distant point by the same methods that 
are used by employment agencies in sending men 
is too great for any state or community to undertake. 

It is generally understood that the best boys for 
farm work are those who are over i6 years of age. 
This is true, of course, of boys who engage in 
general farm work, such as plowing, milking, horse 
cultivating, haying, and harvesting grains and pota- 
toes. Many such boys were placed in the dairying 
and general-farming regions of New York State. 
These boys, in most cases, lived with the individual 
farmer and were paid by the month. But it has 
been found from experience that the 14-year-old boy 
is often better adapted to certain types of farm work 
than is the older boy. For example, the young boy, 
with his adolescent enthusiasm, his nimbler fingers, 
and his general physical alertness, is more desirable 
for picking small fruits, such as strawberries, cur- 
rants, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, and 
cherries. The 14-year-old boy must, however, work 
on a different basis from the one who is over 16. 

It is necessary for the boys to pass a physical 
examination, because no state authorities care to 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 275 

assume the responsibility of taking the physically- 
unfit. It is taken for granted that the boy is to 
fit into the organization of the camp as a business 
proposition and that he is to stick to his work, 
pay his share of the cost of the food and its 
preparation, respond to leadership, and in every 
way do his part toward promoting the general 
efficiency of the camp. 

The enlistment blank used by the New York 
State Military Training Commission is shown on 
page 276. 

The farmer is as important an element as the 
boy; yes, even more important, for the boy gradu- 
ally loses his individuality in the camp conscience. 
The individual farmer remains an individual. He 
has his notions of what boys can do ; he compares 
the work of the inexperienced boy with the adult 
foreign labor which he has previously employed. 
The latter has, until very recently, been available. 
Women with their children came to his farm and 
picked the small fruits without much regard to the 
length of the day's work or to living conditions, and, 
of course, without any reference to the social life 
of the community. This labor went out as it came 
in. If it did not like the job because the pay 
was insufficient, it demanded higher wages and got 
them or left the job and moved on to the next one. 



276 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 



NEW YORK STATE MILITARY TRAINING COMMISSION 

BUREAU OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING 

ENLISTMENT AS FARM CADET 

Name_ 

Residence Street 

Age yr. Height ft in. Weight lb. 

Place of enlistment 

(Name of institution, club, or association) 



I desire to enlist for farm work 
and will report for service : 



Kind of work desired; as 
picking fruit, vegetable gar- 
dening, general farming, etc. 



From mo._ day to mo. day 

From mo day_to mo. day 



Can you drive a team ? Can you milk ?_ 

Can you drive an automobile ? 



State briefly any other farm experience you have had. 

I have examined the applicant and do assert that he is physically 
fit to do farm work. 



(Physician's signature) 



I permit to enlist for farm work as 

stated above 



(Parent or guardian) 



It did not mind shacks which lodged vermin. It 
was not particular about sanitary conveniences; it 
was not particular about anything except wages. 
In shifting from adult foreign labor to boy labor, 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 277 

the farmer was obliged to readjust his mental atti- 
tude. Not only that, but he often had to readjust 
the physical, economic, and social conditions on 
his farm. 

In April, at the time the New York agricultural 
census was taken, the farmer said that he needed 
labor. He even said he would take boy labor, but 
when it came actually to engaging such labor, he 
was inclined to ridicule the -idea. Untrained city 
boys were not in great demand in May, but when 
the foreign labor did not appear on the scene and 
strawberries were ripening on the vines, the farmer 
suddenly discovered that he could use the untrained 
city boy. But he had expected the boys not only 
to work as many hours but also to pick as care- 
fully and as much as adults. He expected the boys 
to work at the same price as had foreigners for 
years past, regardless of the advance in price of 
food and the standards of living. Of course he was 
disappointed, and this is where the leader of the 
camp, through his authority, represents the inter- 
ests of the boys and the newer conditions of farm 
labor which have come out of the employment 
of boys. 

An instance of what happened in Highland, 
New York, will illustrate the power of leadership 
on the part of a camp leader and the cooperative 



278 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

instinct of a group of city boys who have consid- 
erable familiarity with the principles of strikes, 
lockouts, picket duty, and street-corner oratory. 
The boys were being paid one and one-half cents 
a quart for currant picking. In years past this 
had been the usual rate. They could, on the aver- 
age, pick about 40 quarts a day, which brought 
them $3.60 a week, assuming that they worked 
for six days in the week and there was no rain 
or other interruptions. Meanwhile each boy's pro- 
portion of the board at camp amounted to about 
^3.50 a week. At this point a combination of 
training in school debating, listening to speeches 
of industrial disturbers, and a knowledge of trade- 
union methods came into play, for these boys 
gathered together and determined to demand two 
cents a quart. They held a meeting and voted to 
strike for two cents. They marched around the 
berry-storage houses, each wearing an empty berry 
basket as a cap, on which was marked " two cents " 
and which was decorated more or less artistically 
with bunches of currants. A meeting of all farmers 
of the district was called by the general camp 
supervisor of the district. The boys had presented 
their arguments to the individual camp leaders, 
and in turn the supervisor presented them to the 
farmers. The farmers, in turn, presented their 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 279 

difficulties. They said they could not afford to 
pay more; talked about middlemen, commission- 
men, express rates, greater cost of baskets and 
crates, mortgage on the farm, and everything, in 
fact, except the federal income tax. But the boys 
won out, and the meeting resulted in a new price 
never before paid for picking currants. And the 
boys who, up to then, had been able to pick only 
40 quarts a day, were able to gather many more 
after the advance in rate, picking 60 quarts a day 
instead of 40 quarts. There are people who can 
read into this short story an economic principle. 

It is absolutely necessary to have a clear under- 
standing between the boy-camp group, through 
its leader or the organization sending the camp, 
and the individual farmer or the group of farmers 
employing the boys, as to fundamental points of 
remuneration, type of work expected, length and 
permanency of service. 

The boy-camp-group problem is wholly different 
from the problem of the individual boy who works 
for an individual farmer and has no established 
relations with any camp. The latter is a contract 
relationship between the boy and the farmer. The 
farmer usually hires the boy by the month for 
general farm work, and the duties incident to such 
a job are familiar to everyone. The hours may 



28o OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

be long or short, the work hard or easy, the food 
good or bad, the boy's room clean or unsanitary; 
but there is nothing unusual in this problem. 

The one which is discussed here is that of the 
labor camp, where a group of boys are projected 
into a strange community to work at a job un- 
familiar to the majority of them, — working for a 
farmer or a group of farmers who have never 
before employed such a type of labor. Any single 
employer of farm labor who is in a position to 
employ a group of boys may be assumed either 
to be conducting a large farm on which there is 
a great diversity of crops extending over a wide 
range of time of harvesting, or to be a specializ- 
ing farmer working in an intensive way on a 
comparatively small area with special crops which 
are harvested in short periods of time. Perhaps it 
may be better to think of three types of jobs, or 
rather, three types of employers who have jobs 
to be filled by groups of boys. 

First, there is the individual farmer who is a spe- 
cialist. Such employers grow berries and other small 
fruits. Here the boys get very little farm experience. 
They do obtain an idea of country life, and they 
have excellent camp experience, but in order to 
learn much about the fruit and berry business 
they ought to be on the farm during the time of 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 281 

spraying, pruning, and fertilizing. In reality these 
boys are but factory hands under farm conditions. 
Of course this type of work is extremely well 
adapted to the inexperienced boy. 

Second, there is the type of employer repre- 
sented by the vegetable grower. In this case it 
is readily seen that crops are put into the ground 
as early as April, and seeding may continue until 
the fifteenth of August, and with weeding, thin- 
ning, and cultivating, the work may continue prac- 
tically throughout the season. The harvesting of 
certain crops may start late in June and continue 
until the ground freezes. In this work the boys 
obtain the very best sort of farm experience out- 
side of that obtained from general farm work. 
The work which they do is diversified, and they 
learn about many farm operations. 

Third, another type of employer is the business 
organization made up of farmers; as, for example, 
the shippers' or growers' association, where a group 
of farmers unite under a more or less compact 
organization for the purpose of raising and moving 
crops. Another illustration — somewhat different 
for the reason that the organization is not made 
up of farmers, but rather is allied with farmers — 
is that of a canning company. In working for such 
a type of employer the boy may or may not gain 



282 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

considerable agricultural experience, depending en- 
tirely upon whether he is working on diversified 
crops for long periods of time or doing specialized 
harvesting. It is necessary to keep in mind these 
different types of work as represented by different 
types of employers. 

It is clear that in some sections, under certain 
agricultural conditions already described, the job 
might be guaranteed a group of boys from the 
middle of April until the first of November, with 
almost steady work for six days in the week. The 
nature of crops and weather conditions determine 
continuity of work. A heavy rain means a good deal 
of cultivating and weeding immediately afterward in 
order to conserve the moisture. A light rain means 
that the boys can work for part of the day in the 
fields, while in the case of small-fruit farming even 
a slight rain prevents the picking of the fruit. 
Again, in vegetable farming a boy may work all 
day if the fields are not too hot, without any injury 
to his health or to the crops, because the vegetable 
plants cannot be injured by handling, no matter 
how hot it is. 

In the case of the specialized farmer, there is 
little or no guarantee for work beyond a short and 
definite period; that is, the period is necessarily 
short, but whether or not it is definite depends 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 283 

a great deal upon the weather and prices of crops. 
It is obvious that an abundant crop might cause 
a low market price, — a price too low to pay for 
picking, — and employers who early in the season 
thought that they wanted a group of boys might 
decline to accept them at the last moment. They 
might even contract for the boy-labor camp and 
after the boys had picked for a few days desire to 
drop the whole enterprise because of a fall in 
the market price, — a fall which would not be evi- 
dent until the crops commenced to come. Or, again, 
the employer might contract for a camp of boys 
to pick strawberries, for example, and complete 
arrangements might be made for bringing the boys 
to the locality, only to have the camp project aban- 
doned because a week of rain had absolutely ruined 
the strawberry crops. Such an experience was met 
in New York State the past season. A hailstorm in 
Chautauqua County completely destroyed in a few 
minutes the prospects of a camp for the harvesting 
of tomatoes. Now, it is evident that it is a difficult 
matter always to guarantee a job. 

The Bureau of Vocational Training of the Mili- 
tary Training Commission of New York State 
requested the zone representatives in the farm- 
placement bureaus to see to it that jobs were 
guaranteed to boys and that the time of service, 



284 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

place of service, and pay should be clearly stated. 
It furthermore recommended that the job should 
be guaranteed in writing by a single farmer, by a 
group of farmers, or by the corporation desiring 
these boys; that the employing party should state 
the kind of work, the pay, the number of boys 
needed, the duration of service, the living condi- 
tions, the provisions made for the food supply for 
the first week, and so on. It made it clear that 
there should be an assurance in writing of what 
the boys were to expect, and that someone should 
be delegated to see that the employer lived up to 
his agreement. Out of a theory not based upon 
any previous experience it was obviously easy to 
write up such a statement, but to expect it to be 
carried out without a hitch in all parts of the state 
and for all kinds of work and all types of employers, 
not taking into consideration climatic and market 
conditions, to say nothing about the prejudices and 
idiosyncrasies of employers and boys, was to count 
the chickens before they were hatched. About all 
that can be said at this stage of this movement is 
in illustration of the way the job guarantee was 
handled. In what follows it must be kept in mind 
that much of what has been said or what may be 
said about the proposition of guaranteeing the job 
is not at all difficult to carry out in the case of 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 285 

general farming and is only moderately difficult in 
the case of vegetable growing. 

Every camp failure due to the lack of a work- 
able contract justifies the original contention that 
guaranteeing the job is extremely important. 

MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING IN REFERENCE 
TO THE SOUTH LIMA (NEW^ YORK) CAMP 

Between the New York State Military Training Commis- 
sion Farm-Cadet Bureau, West Central Zone (Nathaniel G. 
West, Field Inspector, Rochester, New York) and the 
Growers' and Shippers' Association of South Lima, New York. 

The Farm-Cadet Bureau, West Central Zone, agrees : 

1. To furnish 25 or more unskilled farm cadets, 16 to 
19 years of age, for labor on muck and upland farms. 

2. To furnish a camp leader, who shall have general 
charge of the camp of boys, who shall hire out the boys to 
near-by farmers, collect all wages, and purchase supplies. 

3. That the camp leader shall keep an accurate account of 
all wages paid to farm cadets and percentage collected, such 
accounts to be open for inspection by committee designated 
by the Growers' and Shippers' Association. 

4. To furnish a competent camp cook who shall prepare 
all meals for the farm cadets, 

5. To pay each week, through the camp leader, to the 
Growers' and Shippers' Association a sum for overhead ex- 
penses, as explained below, — such sum to be procured by 
adding to all wages earned by the cadets a sum equal to five 
per cent of such wages. 



286 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

The Growers' and Shippers' Association agrees : 

1. To provide work, as continuously as possible, for each 
of the farm cadets in the above camp from June ii, 19 17, 
to November 3, 1917. 

2. To pay wages for each farm cadet at the rate of ^2 
per day's work, such day's work not to exceed ten hours. 

3. To pay at the end of such week to the camp leader 
all wages earned by farm cadets during that week. 

4. To pay in addition to the above wages a sum equal to 
5 per cent of the wages, such sum to be turned over 
to treasurer of the Growers' and Shippers' Association for 
payment of overhead expenses of the camp. 

5. To arrange for rental of suitable quarters for the 
cadets, furnish two ranges and fuel for same, furnish 27 or 
more cots, tables, benches, and chairs for the quarters, install 
a telephone, and arrange with local grocer for two weeks' 
credit for the camp leader for the purchase of supplies. 

6. To pay for the items mentioned under 5, above, out of 
the 5 per cent received from the camp leader, as agreed above. 

MASSACHUSETTS PLAN OF INDIVIDUAL AGREEMENT 
WITH FARMER 

To the Committee on Food Production and Conservation 

(Department of Mobilization of Schoolboys for Farm Service) 
Dear Sirs : 

I hereby apply for boys to be employed by me 

as general farm labor according to the terms and regulations 
on the reverse side of this application. 

I shall require these boys to begin work upon 

and probably require their services, if satisfactory, 

until 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 287 

I agree to pay each boy $4 per week for the first two 
weeks, and $6 per week thereafter ; such payment to be 
made on Saturday of each week. (Afterwards changed, see 
chapter on " Farm Cadets," p. 250.) 

If the boy Hves in a camp, I agree to pay $4 per week 
for his board, and if he Hves with me, I will furnish his 
board ; the above to be in addition to his wages. 

I agree to employ the boy on rainy days as well as fair 
days, and on rainy days to use his service as far as possible 
under cover. 

I agree, if the boy is unsatisfactory, to give him one 
week's notice or one week's pay, providing him with a 
statement in writing giving my reasons for his discharge. 

Whenever in the opinion of the local supervisor, the con- 
ditions of living or of labor are not satisfactory, the boy may 
be withdrawn without prejudice to him. 

The nature of the work for which the boy is required is 



Sign here 



(Farmer) 

Phone Street address 



Date Town 



The right leadership in a camp is very essen- 
tial. The camp, after all, is but the lengthened 
shadow of its leader. It is not difficult to write the 
qualifications essential to leadership in a boys' farm 
camp, but it is another matter to find any one 



288 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

person who will fill all the conditions that are 
peculiar to a labor camp. A hundred-point man 
capable of measuring up to the problems involved 
in camp leadership must have had experience in 
school or Association work. He would have knowl- 
edge of cooking utensils and personal equipment 
necessary to take to camp ; capacity to arrange 
for transportation for the boys by the most direct, 
convenient, and economical route; ability to deal 
successfully with the problem of the first night in 
camp, — a night when boys cannot or will not 
sleep, when they are stirred up by the novelty of 
the situation. He would be able to recognize good, 
substantial, nourishing food, and to see that the 
boys had proper food in such an emergency as the 
camp cook's suddenly being taken ill or deserting 
his job. He would have had experience in adjusting 
working conditions, would know how many quarts 
of fruit, for example, the average boy can pick; 
would be able to help these boys get the most out 
of their work by showing them the most effective 
method of harvesting; would understand how to 
use first-aid equipment. He would have to see that 
the boys kept up correspondence with their homes. 
He might have to sit up all night with a boy who 
had eaten more fruit than was good for him. 
The right leader will also have to think of reading 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 289 

matter for the camp and of the problem of having 
the boys attend church services on Sunday when 
the membership of the camp has varied rehgious 
beliefs. He may have some orthodox Jews in camp 
when the country village has only a Methodist 
church. He must satisfy the boys who want to have 
a minstrel show, or the townspeople who offer to 
entertain the boys. He may even have to arbitrate 
in labor disputes. He may be the local placement 
bureau. He should be able to drive an automobile, 
in order that he may carry a flying squad five miles 
from camp for a day's work for a farmer who is in 
immediate need. He must be able to answer the 
questions asked on blanks sent out by the state 
departments of agriculture and education, by city 
boards of education, by state Y.M.C.A.'s, by child- 
labor bureaus, and by all other organizations more 
or less directly interested in the new aspects of 
old problems. If the boys have been excused from 
school, he must certify that their labor-camp work 
has been equivalent to the school work which they 
otherwise would have had. He must be the banker 
of the camp and help the boys conserve the money 
which they earn. He is accountable to the group 
for the expenses of the camp, in order that these 
may be divided pro rata. He must be able to buy 
supplies at the least cost. 



290 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

It is with deliberate intention that this list has 
been made lengthy and of wide range, in order to 
show that no man exists who could meet adequately 
every condition imposed. He is bound to be " born 
short," as William Hawley Smith would state it, 
on some of these angles. If he is a social-minded 
man of the Boy Scout or Y.M.C.A. type, he will 
be long on entertainments, recreation, food require- 
ments, knowledge of personal equipment, group 
work, first aid, and sanitation. If he is of the 
school-teacher type, he will probably be strong on 
discipline, efficient in looking after details of school 
credits, camp expenses, records, moral conditions, 
letter writing, and keeping boys busy. If he is a 
technical man in agriculture, he may know nothing 
about baseball on Saturday afternoon or how to 
organize a minstrel show, but he will probably 
know how to do more than keep boys busy. He 
will keep them effectively busy; that is, he will 
arrange to have certain boys do the lines of work 
adapted to their skill and knowledge. He will dis- 
cover ways of utilizing the labor of the unskilled 
boy. He will be able to judge whether or not a 
boy is working to his full capacity, and he may 
be somewhat pitiless if the boy does not measure 
up to a farm-labor standard. In other words, 
such a man will be very largely interested in a 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 291 

working camp. He will be interested in meeting the 
conditions imposed by the farmers. He will know 
that the berries must be expressed by four o'clock 
and that the picking may have to stop promptly at 
two. He will know that a leaky crate of raspberries 
means a low price for possibly a whole carload. 
He will be less interested, perhaps, in the balanced 
ration and more interested in using the products 
of the community on the camp table. He will not 
be interested in the records required by school 
officials so much as in those expected of him by 
the farm-bureau agent. In short, his idea is to pro- 
mote agriculture and not to promote the county 
Y.M.C.A. movement, the back-to-the-farm move- 
ment, or any other movement which may be allied 
with the farm-cadet service. 

It is not possible to find any one man who is 
socially, pedagogically, and agriculturally minded. 
If he claims to be good in all three fields he prob- 
ably is mediocre. The experience of the past year, 
however, shows some remarkably fine work done 
by leaders of boy camps. Some have been public- 
school teachers who have given their summer serv- 
ices for nothing or for a nominal fee. Some have 
been released from their duties as Y.M.C.A. secre- 
taries in order that the association might make a 
contribution to the farm-cadet movement. Some 



292 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

have been physical directors in public schools. 
Some have been scout masters among the Boy 
Scouts. Others have been agricultural teachers 
who saw that this work was, after all, in the line 
of their usual duties. 

The following illustrates one of the hundred 
things which a camp leader must know about: 



INSTRUCTIONS TO FARM CADETS ENLISTED FOR CAMP- 
SQUAD SERVICE IN NEW YORK STATE 

JVHAT TO TAKE 
NECESSARY ARTICLES 

Bed sack 75 x 30 indies (to be stuffed with straw at camp) 
or cot mattress ; enamel-ware plate, cup, saucer, sauce dish, also 
knife, fork, and spoon ; ditmer pail or box, two heavy blankets, 
small pillow, working dothes, sweater, gymnasium shirt, raincoat 
or old overcoat, heavy shoes, toothbrush, tooth powder, small 
mirror, towels, extra socks, rubbers or rubber boots, extra under- 
wear, hairbrush, comb, soap, handkerchiefs, pajamas, a good 
disposition, and a spirit of loyalty to the camp and its aims. 

DESIRABLE ARTICLES 

Musical instruments, camera, baseball, glove, bat, needles, 
thread, safety pins, notebook, pencils, writing paper, envelopes, 
good books, magazines. 



The methods of housing the boys differ widely. 
Ordinarily one thinks of tents as being the most 
feasible, but the scarcity and high cost of such 
equipment during the past year prevented the boys 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 293 

from living under canvas. Generally speaking, it 
would be better to think in terms of something 
more permanent than tents, as these do not last 
more than three years, and if the camp idea of har- 
vesting crops by the use of boys is to continue, — 
and many believe it will, — it is advisable to plan 
for a permanent and inexpensive type of building. 
A rough board shack with a good roof is highly de- 
sirable in the early spring days and in the late fall. 

Many of the cadets in New York State camps 
were quartered in berry houses (which are really 
packing and storage houses located in the berry 
fields), in vacant houses, in schoolhouses, in grange 
halls, and in buildings located on the fair grounds. 
Most of these berry houses were two stories high, 
the first floor being used for the commissary de- 
partment and the second floor for dormitories. In 
such cases the berries were packed in temporary 
shacks adjoining the berry houses. In other cases 
the boys have used the first floor for a sitting 
room and built a rough shack back of the berry 
or storage house for kitchen and dining room. 

One of the most significant camping places was 
that of a two-room schoolhouse, where cots for fifty 
boys were put into the rooms, and the basement was 
used as a kitchen. The boys built a table outside 
and put up a canopy over it for a dining room. 



294 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

They next dammed up a brook which ran back 
of the schoolhouse and made what they termed a 
"bathtub," which was capable of holding about six 
boys at a time. They also put into fine condition 
the rather disreputable schoolhouse latrines. These 
boys made the schoolhouse ring at night with their 
popular school songs; the old piano did its best to 
bring together the heritages of the East Side and 
of the Highlands of the Hudson. 

There are several ways of making provision for 
camp equipment. One is to develop, under state, 
county, or local auspices, a series of permanent 
camp quarters located in small-fruit, large-fruit, and 
muck-land districts. This equipment need not be 
expensive. It will be located very near the source 
of labor demand and can always be used, whether 
boy or adult labor is employed. Fruit and produce 
growers and kindred establishments have in the 
past provided, more or less, for such an equipment. 

Another plan is to use schoolhouses, grange halls, 
vacant farm buildings, and agricultural-fair equip- 
ment. It is unfortunate that so much property ordi- 
narily used for public purposes lies idle for long 
periods of time. Some may say that the city boy 
will not leave country property in good shape, but 
experience so far has shown that the city boys 
have left things better than they found them. 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 295 

Still another type already spoken of is tentage, 
and perhaps the best way to provide such an equip- 
ment is to have the state furnish it through the 
adjutant general's office. 

The sanitary aspects of any type of camp are highly 
important. In Massachusetts the committee of pub- 
lic safety, which established boy camps, required 
that the sanitary conditions of these camps should 
be inspected by the board of health, and the com- 
mittee furnished full directions and a blue print 
for the building of a sanitary latrine. 

Some of the camps burn their garbage in home- 
made incineration plants. 

Ordinary garden hose with a watering-pot sprin- 
kler attachment, or an elevated barrel with a sprayer 
attached, and filled by the use of a pail and ladder, 
were shower-bath devices worked out by the boys 
in various camps. 

All the camps devised some method of keeping 
food cool, ranging from those that had a real city 
ice chest down to those that cleaned out a spring 
and set in it a bottomless, covered box. 

The job of feeding boys in camp is not a sinecure. 
Every scheme has been tried, from engaging at a 
salary of one hundred dollars a month a Pullman 
dining-car chef down to, or shall it be said up to, 
a boy cook. The cook problem in a labor camp is 



296 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

as difficult to handle as is the so-called " servant " 
problem of the city. The average cook knows more 
about cooking than he does about dietetics. He 
is very likely to lack adaptability. He is usually 
untrained for camp cooking and is not particu- 
larly open to suggestions. Experience seems to 
show that the best cook is the one who has done 
w^ork in a Y.M.C.A. camp or in a Boy Scout camp. 
Of course, this year there was a great scarcity of the 
latter class to be found, as they were needed in their 
own organizations, and therefore many camps were 
obliged to employ a local woman of the matronly 
type to cook for the boys ; sometimes an experienced 
camp leader has developed some good cooks among 
the boys in camp. Perhaps the best results, how- 
ever, were obtained from boys who before the open- 
ing of camps were given from two to four weeks of 
camp-cooking instruction in the school system from 
which they came. These boys were ready to use the 
products of the localities, such as peas, beans, toma- 
toes, radishes, lettuce, and corn, while the profes- 
sional cook often seemed more familiar with the use 
of the can opener. 

The quantity and variety of food was practically 
in the hands of the boys themselves, assuming 
that the cook was a good one. If the allowance 
of fruit for breakfast, for example, consisted of four 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 297 

prunes or one banana or half an orange, and the 
group as a whole desired a larger portion, it was 
perfectly possible for them to secure it by so 
voting, for it must be remembered that the food 
expense of the camps was divided pro rata among 
the boys. Under these conditions, however, it was 
found that the boys were very economical and 
frowned upon the few malcontents who wanted to 
gorge themselves. 

The cafeteria style of serving prevailed generally. 

Providing amusements in recreation camps is 
always a problem, but farm cadets require little in 
the way of entertainment after eight or ten hours of 
field service. Camp-fire talks on agriculture, corn 
roasts, toasting marshmallows, giving musical enter- 
tainments and minstrel shows, holding mock trials, 
playing baseball on Saturday afternoons or Sundays, 
constitute the chief forms of recreation. In every 
instance the lads have been well received in the 
local communities. They were popular features at 
church entertainments. Red Cross benefits, and 
country sociables. Often the boys, especially in 
the berry-picking regions, went swimming about 
4 p. M., after the crates had been sent by the 
afternoon express. 

In every instance the village church and the 
county Y.M.C. A. took an active interest in the farm 



298 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

cadets. Many of the boys played musical instru- 
ments, and their confidence in themselves was con- 
tributory to many supplementary boy choirs. The 
country pastors evidently made it a point to do 
what they could for the pleasure of all the boys, and 
without exception there seemed to be no religious 
distinctions. In some camps the Catholic priest 
expressed his fatherly feeling for the lads. In 
others the Jewish and Catholic boys attended the 
union village church. In brief, the boys entered into 
the spirit of the rural life, and both the country folk 
and the youth of the city were the better for it. 

A study of the different camps in operation in 
various parts of the country seems to indicate that 
they might be grouped under six heads as follows. 

I. Concentration^ or trainmg^ camps. These are 
usually located in agriculturally strategic sections 
of the state, where boys may receive preliminary 
training in camp life and in farm work under disci- 
plinary and instructional conditions. Of course 
such a camp can do nothing more than give the 
boys a training in the elements of farm activities 
(such as harnessing a horse, running a hand culti- 
vator, using a hoe, driving a team) and serve as a 
trying-out period for weeding out boys who are 
unsatisfactory. These camps cannot be considered 
-places which will give a preliminary agricultural 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 299 

education, for that is very different from giving 
a preliminary idea of farm operations. After these 
boys have received a course of such training, they 
are sent out under leadership to work in a section 
of the state where a group may work for one 
farmer and live at the camp meanwhile or may 
work for individual farmers and live with the em- 
ployer. Obviously it is taken for granted that such 
a camp is located in a good agricultural section 
and that its surroundings have something more 
than fine swimming holes or beautiful scenery. 
These boys must be trained in an environment and 
under conditions similar to the farm life in which 
they are to participate later. It would seem that 
the agricultural colleges of the country and the 
secondary schools of agriculture would, generally 
speaking, offer splendid locations for establishing 
training camps. Here would be found, or ought 
to be found, good land. This is not always true, 
because occasionally an agricultural college has 
been located irrespective of good land. The tech- 
nical and dormitory facilities, however, would be 
available for the boys in training. 

II. Farm-working, or labor-distributing, ca^nps. 
These are concentration camps in a certain sense, 
but they are located directly in the farm district 
where the boys, after receiving their preliminary 



300 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

training, are to find work in the community ad- 
joining the camp. Several camps of this order have 
started out with the idea of giving a preHminary 
training in agriculture in the camp itself, and have 
borrowed or bought farming implements and teams 
and leased land in order to give the training. But 
in the majority of cases this idea was abandoned, 
for it was found that these boys could receive all 
their preliminary training with the farmers, pro- 
vided the leader of the camp could establish help- 
ful relations between the boy and the employing 
farmer and could, out of his wisdom and experi- 
ence, protect the boy in the early stages of the 
work and guide him in all its stages. In other 
words, in this type of camp a city man, acting 
as leader, comes into a community with a group 
of boys who live at the camp but receive their 
training with the near-by farmers. A labor-supply 
camp, composed of able-bodied boys, is a type which 
adequately meets the need at small expense. 

III. Military farm-training camp. This is a type 
of camp where city boys, under the direction of a 
school or some organization, go into a farming com- 
munity and open up new land which otherwise 
would not have been put under cultivation. These 
boys stay at the camp during the season. They 
do not work for the farmers near by, or, at least, 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 301 

not ordinarily, — the intention being to establish 
a self-supporting and self-maintaining camp for the 
use of the boys who attend. The land is tilled, 
the seed planted, and the harvest gathered for the 
benefit of the boys. Any profits are given to the 
boys or to the school, and any expenses for con- 
ducting the camp, or overhead charges, usually 
come out of the organization or school represented. 
It is questionable whether, generally speaking, this 
type of camp is on a sound economic and agri- 
cultural basis. If such a camp could be carried on 
for a number of years with a strong school or 
other organization behind it, and plenty of capital, 
it is very likely that it would succeed. It takes 
capital to establish good soil conditions and pur- 
chase tools, farm machinery, and stock, and to put 
up buildings. It is a highly desirable type of camp 
to consider in terms of many years or where a 
school wishes to give its boys a military and farm 
experience. But in the food emergency through 
which the country is now passing, it is doubtful if 
this type of camp should ever have been started. 
It is, however, an excellent type to establish as a 
permanent adjunct to a city school system. 

IV. Cooperative camp where the boys share in 
proceeds. This type of camp is practically like III, 
and if the farm land is new and the camp leader 



302 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

is untrained in agricultural operations and the boys 
are unskilled, it is about as likely to be doomed 
to failure as is the other. 

V. The village- or country-school type of camp. 
This is a camp where the schoolboys, under the 
leadership of a teacher, go to the outskirts of the 
village and develop a garden. If the land is good 
and the teacher knows agriculture and the boys 
attend to business, they will most certainly receive 
an excellent practical training useful to them in 
life. They will have learned how to work in the 
soil, how to work together for a common purpose, 
how to stick to a job until it is finished, how to 
look ahead from the time seed is purchased until 
the crop is placed in the hands of the customer. 
All these things are good and they are useful to any 
boy, but, of course, from the standpoint of increas- 
ing the food supply in any large way through the 
growing of wheat, feed corn, oats, rye, buckwheat, 
potatoes, and large fruits there is little to be said. 
The work is to be commended on the basis of its 
value to the individual boy. 

VI. Short-term camp, sometimes called "^flying 
squadron'' This type of camp is advisable only in 
an intensive-farming region where quick service 
for the harvesting period is needed. The squad 
itself will serve to keep a balance between the 



ORGANIZATION OF A CADET CAMP 303 

demand for labor and the supply. It is easy to 
picture a fruit region around and through which 
are a number of camps. Each one ought to be 
working to the limit, but, of course, as a matter 
of fact in one section there would be a greater de- 
mand for boys than could be met by the local 
camp. It is at this time that the flying squadron 
comes in, when, in response to the SOS call, a group 
of temporarily idle boys from one camp may be sent 
to another camp which is short of help. 



CHAPTER XII 

A SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 

Out of this war we are going to have a new spirit 
and method in education. England has already be- 
gun to evaluate its present system. It has issued 
a report on the assistance which education, if prop- 
erly directed, can give to industry and commerce 
after the war. The results of a recent investigation 
afford — so the report states — a convincing proof 
of the necessity of improving and extending the 
provisions hitherto made for instruction and train- 
ing in scientific studies as a necessary foundation 
for fruitful research. 

The report goes on to say that, in a sense un- 
known to former generations, England has become 
a part of Europe ; and in the interest not merely of 
commerce but of the intelligent conduct of national 
affairs an adequate knowledge of the languages — 
and, through the languages, of the literatures, his- 
tories, and civilizations of European countries — 
should be in the possession of a far larger pro- 
portion of its population than in the past. It states 

that particular subjects of instruction in the high 

304 




Military engineering will become a popular and necessary part of the cur- 
ricula of our colleges and technical institutes. A class in suspension-bridge 
work at Wentworth Institute, Boston, Massachusetts 




Military preparedness of college boys and schoolboys includes other activities 

than merely drilling. Trench drainage, one of a score of war emergency 

courses, at Wentworth Institute, Boston, Massachusetts 




Returned convalescent soldiers, who would be idle but for the opportunity 
offered to brush up their education. Ogden Military Convalescent Hospital 




A corner of the printing and photo-engraving shop at Manitoba Military Con- 
valescent Hospital, Winnipeg. These men have been assigned to courses of 
reeducation because of inability to return to their former occupations 



SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 305 

schools and institutes cannot be divorced from the 
consideration of their organization and of their cur- 
ricula as a whole, if a proper balance of studies is 
to be secured and if higher education is to be truly 
liberal and humane in its spirit and influence. It 
insists that access to the schools must be ren- 
dered easier for native ability wherever it is found, 
and affirms again and again that the needs of 
the nation cannot be satisfied merely by changes 
affecting higher education or by a provision of educa- 
tional facilities confined to scholars of special gifts 
and abilities. It closes by saying that the future 
will make new and increased demands, especially 
in a democratic community, on the health, char- 
acter, and intelligence of every citizen; and these 
demands can only be met by comprehensive and 
far-reaching improvements and developments of 
elementary education. 

The individual-industrial-efficiency idea which we 
obtained from Germany will have to be interpreted 
in America not for military purposes, but in terms 
of personal and vocational service for the nation. 
Just as the academic militarism of the Old World 
has been found wanting and has been gradually 
transformed into the mobilization of all forces be- 
hind the lines on an entirely new basis and concep- 
tion of what may be done by a people in time of 



3o6 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

war, so we in this country shall learn that we may 
in times of peace, through efficient and effective 
living, prepare for defense. In this preparation we 
may learn that improved elementary education, that 
vocational training, that bringing into the schools 
the Boy Scout spirit, that teaching of sanitation and 
personal hygiene, that organizing our courses on a 
unit and project basis, that developing systems of 
student service in school life, that extending school 
facilities to adults, and a hundred other things which 
have been thought of as fads and pedagogical idio-' 
syncrasies will, to quote the New York State law 
relative to military equivalents, " specifically prepare 
for service useful to the state in the maintenance 
of defense, in the promotion of public safety, in 
the conservation and development of the state's 
resources, or in the construction and maintenance 
of public improvements." Truly, a program for 
peace as well as for war. 

The school board and its executive officer, the 
superintendent, should do everything to save the 
school buildings for school purposes. They are lit- 
erally factories turning out, it is hoped, handmade 
products; and in time of war their service should 
be increased rather than diminished. To use them 
as hospitals will be a mistake, — better by far con- 
fiscate department stores. Bring the war into the 



SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 307 

schools in the spirit already interpreted in preceding 
chapters, but do not take the schools into the war. 

Do not eliminate studies indiscriminately. Eval- 
uate if you will, — and this is always well, — but 
wholesale cutting out is to be avoided. It may be 
that the cost and value of instruction in freehand 
drawing will have to be compared with the perma- 
nent value of the study of Latin. It may be that 
instead of adding to the vocational department a 
machine-shop equipment, which is always expensive, 
it will be discovered that a cooperative course can 
be developed, employing the equipment of a neigh- 
boring factory, and that all the school need furnish 
is a teacher for blackboard work in mathematics, 
drawing, and science. It is likely that a longer 
school day will be advisable and also a longer school 
year. It is quite probable that the introduction of 
the methods of the Boy Scout movement into the 
public schools will be found superior to some of 
the present teaching of nature study, recreational 
work, civics, and conduct. 

Provision must be made for filling the places of 
the male teachers who will be drafted. Many of 
these will be instructors in science and mathe- 
matics. It ought to be possible to secure the serv- 
ices of retired civil or mechanical engineers for 
teaching these subjects. It is feasible to draft into 



3o8 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

service married women who have once taught. It 
is to be hoped that the government will eventu- 
ally recognize that educational enterprise as well 
as industrial enterprise ought to furnish grounds 
for exemption. As war comes closer to us provi- 
sion must be made for keeping the schools open 
twelve months in the year, and from eight in the 
morning until ten at night for six days in the week. 
Every child up to the age of 14 must be kept in 
school. It is the best place for him, provided, of 
course, the school rises to its full height, — and it 
is taken for granted that it will. The physical 
condition of the younger children especially should 
be watched very carefully. The teacher should dis- 
cover the conditions at home. It may be that some 
pupils have had no breakfast and are not likely to 
have a suitable lunch or even a supper. Some 
will have to be fed in the schools, and here is an 
opportunity for the older girls in domestic-science 
classes. Some will report certain home conditions 
that will require that the school make a report to 
the local Red Cross chapter or some other relief 
agency. Again there is opportunity for the older 
girls to serve through their knowledge of home 
nursing, infant feeding, and first aid. 

If the war strikes us hard, we may have to think 
of part-time work for children above 14, but we 



SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 309 

must never let the children get away from us as 
they have in England. We must control the exodus. 
We must not abrogate the existing compulsory- 
attendance laws and the existing labor laws. We 
must not interpret these laws with laxity and shut 
our eyes while the children go by us on their way 
to work. We may do well to amend these laws 
if in so doing we can incorporate useful labor into 
the educative process. In other words, we must be 
constructive in any part-time measures which are 
adopted. The educative value of profitable labor 
need not be lost. 

It will be well for us to look into the real 
value of military training for schoolboys before 
we adopt in a wholesale fashion obsolete militar- 
ism. The value of wooden-gunism is questionable. 
Physical training, vocational training, athletics, Boy 
Scout work, team play, and discipline are far more 
valuable. Military drill given in addition to these 
activities may be advisable. However, on this point 
there is still a difference of opinion. But to give 
formal military instruction without considering its 
adaptability to the methods used in modern war- 
fare and the training incident to effective prepa- 
ration for them is neither military preparedness 
on the one hand nor sensible educational procedure 
on the other. 



3IO OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

School boards ought to organize at once voca- 
tional courses to secure state and national aid, and 
seek from the legislature state aid for directors of 
community gardens, as, from now on, these will be 
a permanent feature of community life. Some sort 
of provision ought to be made relative to bring- 
ing agriculture into the city school or taking the 
city boy to agriculture. A country branch of a 
city school is possible. Play and recreation centers 
must be developed. The increase of juvenile offenses 
in both England and France during this war has 
been tremendous. Many of these offenses are com- 
mitted by children who are still at school. There 
is much evidence that owing to the absence on mili- 
tary service of their fathers, — and, perhaps even 
more, of their elder brothers, — the industrial em- 
ployment of their mothers, the darkened streets, and 
other circumstances, many school children are suffer- 
ing from the lack of proper care and discipline and 
are exposed to serious risks of deterioration. These 
conditions have been mitigated through the estab- 
lishment of evening play centers, which provide the 
children with suitable occupation and amusement 
after school hours. 

The principal of a school can play a large part 
in a war-emergency program. He can develop the 
idea of War Savings among the children in his 



SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 311 

school. Announcement has been made that the 
government intends to develop the War Savings 
Certificate plan of England. These certificates are 
perhaps better adapted to persons of small means 
than a Liberty Bond. The United States Treasury- 
Department has set forth a plan for advertising and 
selling these certificates through the public schools 
of the nation. The aim is to have every pupil an 
owner of a " little baby bond " and a participant in 
a democratic plan of government security. A cam- 
paign for thrift has been started. The schools must 
do their part. 

The principal can organize patriotic meetings at 
which he can explain the purposes of the Red 
Cross, the Liberty Loan, and the garden and conser- 
vation movements. He can distribute pamphlets 
relating to war service. In a small community he 
can be the leader of the Red Cross movement, only 
he must always remember that he is to work with 
state and national organizations and is not to write 
to Washington when he can perhaps step across 
the street to local headquarters or write directly to 
state headquarters. Of course, he will follow closely 
the printed directions with reference to bandages, 
shipping, etc., for the general organization has put 
more thought into it and gained more experience 
than he could possibly gather. 



312 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

Obviously the principal ought to allow no com- 
petition between school organizations and local or- 
ganizations. If the local organization is strong and 
effective, he ought to work under it. If it is not, 
he may well work over it. By all means he should 
inform pupils of the meaning of the war, that they 
in turn may carry word to their parents ; and such 
work is not always limited to districts where people 
are foreign born. There may be as much need 
for such work in the West as in New York City. 
A Western farmer is reported as saying that he 
did not care who owned the country or whether 
the Germans took it or not so long as he sold 
his wheat crop. 

The principal may direct a state census on some 
particular data for which state authorities may call. 
He should bring together various bulletins issued 
by state and national governments which concern 
food production and conservation, sanitation, public 
health, nursing, dietetics, etc., and by publishing lists 
of such material in newspapers and posting them 
on school bulletin boards, bring the information 
within them to the people who need it most. He 
should make the hall exercises in the school mean 
more than ever. Let us hope that " America " may 
be sung with more vim, and that the principal will 
know the second stanza. The " Marseillaise " and 



SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 313 

other national songs of our allies may be sung. Of 
course a service flag made by the girls in the school 
hangs prominently in the assembly hall, and each 
of its stars speaks for a teacher, a student, or a 
graduate who represents the life-giving contribu- 
tion of the school to the cause of democracy. 

The country-school principal has a great deal to 
do. His work differs from that of the city principal 
in that he may be a recognized leader in almost 
everything, while the city principal must necessarily 
cooperate with individuals and organizations. The 
principal in the open country can be the local 
agent for seed and fertilizer and for the distribution 
of farmers' bulletins. In fact, he may be the local 
representative for the state departments of educa- 
tion, of agriculture, of labor, and of health. 

He ought to use judgment in excusing boys from 
school for farm work. He will know the exact cir- 
cumstances under which a boy goes to work. He 
will know whether he is working on his father's 
farm or that of a neighbor. He can help that boy 
with his lessons so that he can do some studying 
at home and keep up with his classes. And in 
the late fall, when the boys return to school from 
their farm work, he can organize a special class 
in order that they may satisfactorily make up 
their studies. This extra work on his part and 



314 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

that of his coworkers will make one of the answers 
to the call to the colors which comes to every man 
and woman in this country. 

A city principal can organize an agricultural 
course in his city school, and obtain a state-aided 
teacher for giving agricultural theory in the winter 
in connection with biological science, and have this 
teacher take a group of boys into the country in 
the spring. He can always think of his boys as 
going out to farm work on the basis of an organ- 
ized group, and on that basis only. A teacher from 
his school might go with these boys and serve as 
their leader. It is probable that educational experi- 
ments of this nature will lead eventually to country 
branches of city schools. 

It is clear that the industrial and trade schools, 
because of the very nature of their purpose, may 
render unusual service, but they must start out 
with the idea that they are to take their direc- 
tions from the state boards of control of vocational 
education rather than go off at a tangent inde- 
pendent of any state or national movement. It 
must be remembered that provision has been made 
for a national system of vocational education with 
a Federal Board of Vocational Education guiding 
it, and that every state board having charge of 
vocational education is working in conjunction with 



SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 315 

the national board. We must keep in mind that 
the Federal Board of Vocational Education is in 
close touch with the National Council of Defense 
at Washington, and consequently with all depart- 
ments of the national government which concern 
war measures. For a local school to jeopardize its 
chances for national and state aid through failure 
to follow a program provided by these authorities, 
or to develop types of work which are out of accord 
with national needs, will not be the part of wisdom 
or common sense. These schools must not forget 
that their primary function is to make mechanics 
and not army supplies, but if they are called upon 
to do the latter work, or if they can do it effectively, 
they must make it educational in its aim and not 
merely productive work. 

State officials ought to have inventories made 
of the equipment of the vocational schools, with 
a census of the experience and training of the 
instructors, and a state study ought to be made 
of plans to train workers for the different branches 
needed. Such a study would point out how the 
semiskilled may become skilled, how the unskilled 
may become semiskilled, how the necessary train- 
ing may be given to specialist tool makers, and 
how there can be developed a type of industrial 
work suitable for women and girls. 



3i6 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

The directors of trade schools will provide op- 
portunities for the training of foremen in evening 
classes, or at other times if necessary, using methods 
of instruction which will increase their skill in deal- 
ing with green help or unskilled laborers. These 
men will adjust the evening schools to run the year 
round, and also provide for off-time classes. 

In vocational schools of the commercial order, 
of which we have very few in the country, provi- 
sion will be made for short-unit courses in com- 
mercial practice for women and girls to fit them 
to take the place of men drafted. 

As has already been stated, it is very likely that 
the day vocational schools will have comparatively 
few pupils during the war period, as young persons 
who ordinarily go to these schools will have readily 
obtained work in factories. However, such youth 
can still be instructed if the school will go to the 
factory and there establish training courses. 

The present is a good time to develop com- 
mercial courses which have a vocational purpose, 
and which have methods more in accord with the 
definition of vocational training. The commercial 
departments in the majority of our high schools 
rather indifferently train stenographers, typists, and 
clerks. They do not even attempt to train sales- 
men and saleswomen, index and statistical clerks. 



SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 317 

comptometer operators, etc. Very few of the com- 
mercial courses have either the definiteness of aim 
of the industrial and trade schools or the practical 
contact with actual commercial practice which will 
be necessary if they are to meet the requirements 
of modern business. Commercial schools have not 
yet caught the spirit of part-time, off-time, or short- 
unit programs. 

The manual-training teacher will find plenty to 
do; that is, if the state departments of education 
furnish him definite data and specifications for war- 
emergency work. It will be practically useless for 
him to carry on special work in any large way 
unless the field of service of the boy workers is 
organized in some such way as is the Red Cross 
work. If boxes are needed for packing supplies, a 
working drawing of the same ought to be furnished 
by the state department. If hospital furniture, such 
as bed racks and tables, is needed, the articles 
should be standardized in order that they may be 
made in quantities and may be serviceable when 
they reach the source of need. The same is true 
of splints. The reason for the great accomplishment 
of the French and Canadian boys in the making of 
splints used temporarily on the field of service is 
that they have been furnished with very definite 
directions as to size, material, and method of making. 



3i8 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

It cannot be too emphatically stated that the 
war-service work of the elementary and secondary 
schools needs definite direction from the state de- 
partments of education if the unity of effort based 
upon directions common to all are to result not 
only in effective work but also in fulfilling the social 
and civic purposes which are behind the service. 

This is an opportune time for the manual-training 
teacher to abandon his set of models. They should 
have been set aside long ago. His war-service 
duties will give an additional motive for socializing 
his work. In small cities and villages where there is 
plenty of land available for cultivation the director 
of manual training, on the first of May, ought to 
change his title and assume his duties as director 
of community gardens. He should have been pre- 
paring for this work by giving instruction in garden 
work in the manual-training room during March 
and April. Meanwhile he should have interested 
adults of the community in the plan of a garden 
where both old and young might work, and should 
have brought together civic forces to accomplish the 
purpose — a purpose which is educational, social, 
recreational, and useful. 

Dealing with boys under fifteen, as the average 
manual-training teacher will, it is possible for him 
to develop a type of manual arts which will serve 



SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 319 

to create or arouse a set of industrial interests 
helpful to the boy in determining his life career. 
With every temptation to a pupil to leave school, 
the manual-training teacher will now have an un- 
usual opportunity to make his work so attractive 
and economically so helpful that the boy may see 
the advantage of paying no attention to industrial- 
service inducements. 

This is a time for increasing the field of useful- 
ness of the industrial arts in connection with the 
problems involved in the junior high school. This 
type of school is certain to meet with increased 
favor during and after the war, and the reasons are 
both educational and administrative. 

So much has already been said in several places 
in this book about the service which cooking and 
sewing teachers may render, that it is hardly 
necessary in this place to do more than give a 
very brief summary. As supplies for cooking les- 
sons become more expensive, the cooking teacher 
must make more of demonstrations to pupils, and 
less, perhaps, of actual practice. The war recipes 
which she uses must be mimeographed or printed 
and given the pupils to take home. She must or- 
ganize classes for adults in unit courses and hold 
them afternoons and evenings. In fact, she might 
well have the mothers come with the children 



320 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

during the regular session and receive some special 
instructions which the children receive. She will be 
busy the year round ; her larger work will begin 
when the schools close, in that she will start her 
canning and community-club work. A situation 
can easily be conceived wherein she will have in 
reality very little teaching responsibility in the 
classroom. She will be looked upon as the com- 
munity organizer for all types of food conserva- 
tion, and some of her older girls will, in all proba- 
bility, be teaching in the regular classes. Of 
course, she will interest all the children in the 
school in saving bottles, jars, crocks, large-mouthed 
bottles, tumblers, small wooden pails, etc. for con- 
tainers for the jams, preserves, and fruit juices 
which will be put up. She will obtain all the new 
bulletins on processes of drying and dehydrating. 
Perhaps she may have initiative enough to dis- 
cover a fruit crop which will not be picked except 
through her efforts. Perhaps she will find an 
orphan asylum in the community filled with boys 
and girls who can pick this fruit crop. 

The sewing teacher has more than enough to 
do. If the Red Cross chapter does not keep her 
busy, then she can keep the chapter active. With 
the price of materials as high as it is now and 
the quality as poor, there is plenty of opportunity 



SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 321 

to look over, in every home, the last year's ward- 
robe. She might organize a Thrift Club. Enthusi- 
astic youth will do almost anything under the 
name of "club." 

It is to be hoped that every girl in the school 
above the age of ten will enroll in the sewing 
class and not sit idly by while a few do all the 
work. Very likely the household-arts teacher will 
organize a home-cadet unit, just as the boys 
will be organized into farm-cadet units. The 
girls will have their pledge of loyalty and per- 
haps will wear their chevrons, badges, or buttons, 
and will enroll for specific work in food, clothing, 
or shelter projects. 

The agricultural teacher will have more than he 
can do. An effective teacher in normal periods is 
always busy with his supervision of home-project 
work, preparation of material for classroom teach- 
ing, gathering of laboratory exhibits, etc. But in 
war time he must carry on his shoulders still larger 
burdens. In the early spring he will discontinue 
his formal agricultural teaching to the special voca- 
tional group and broaden his work to include those 
who have not regularly enrolled in the agricultural 
course. To the latter he will give some very definite 
suggestions for immediate use on the farm; while 
the boys who have been with him all winter will 



322 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

be excused from school to give their entire time to 
their home projects. To those who have recently 
come into the class there will be given special work 
in the classroom which they may practice outside 
of school hours and which they can follow for full 
time during the summer. 

He will have a good deal to do with the farm- 
cadet idea, and in the winter he will doubtless be 
thinking of the type of camp which he will es- 
tablish or with which he will be connected. He 
may decide that he can do best by organizing a 
labor-distributing camp on his own initiative, or 
that he will serve as an assistant at the state- 
farm training camp, or that he will take his boys, 
if they are village boys, to the outskirts of the 
village and establish a cooperative camp ; or he 
may get in touch with the teacher of biology in 
a city school and offer the country schoolhouse 
and his services for a training camp made up of 
city boys. It is assumed that he is in close touch 
with the county farm agent; perhaps he is the 
local representative of the club work which the 
United States Department of Agriculture is pro- 
moting; and, of course, he is taking the responsi- 
bility of acting as agent in his territory for the 
United States Boys' Working Reserve, — a really 
wonderful organization full of immense possibilities. 



SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 323 

This Boys' Working Reserve movement started 
under the auspices of the United States Depart- 
ment of Labor in cooperation with the Council of 
National Defense, for the purpose of mobilizing 
young men between the ages of 16 and 21 for 
productive labor in the war emergency. 

During the summer of 191 7 the Reserve confined 
its activities principally to giving federal recognition 
to those youths who, as members of state organiza- 
tions, had worked at least three weeks on farms or 
in food production. At present it is organized in 
40 states and in the District of Columbia. Recently 
it has extended its activities to include industrial 
occupations. Each boy who is physically fit and 
who, with the consent of his parents, has taken the 
oath of service, is enrolled as a recruit and given 
an enrollment button and a certificate bearing the 
great seal of the United States. When he has 
worked faithfully and capably for the stated period, 
he is awarded a federal bronze badge of honor. 

After January i, 1918, thirty-six days of eight 
hours each are to be required on the farm or in food 
production in order to earn the badge. In industrial 
occupations the boy will be required to work at 
least sixty days of eight hours in some occupation 
considered essential in helping the nation in the 
conduct of the war, in order to receive recognition. 



324 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

The national director, Mr. William E. Hall, en- 
courages every boy to remain in school and in spare 
time to pursue some vocational training to make 
himself capable of performing a productive war 
service, in the expectation that he will be awarded 
a badge of honor when he has actually entered an 
essential occupation. It is expected that we shall 
soon see a registered army of young men ordi- 
narily not available, which may be used to fill the 
gaps in the labor ranks caused by war activities. 

The Reserve has been indorsed by President 
Wilson in the following language: 

Permit me to express my great appreciation of the work 
undertaken by the United States Boys' Working Reserve of 
the Employment Service of Department of Labor. To give 
to the young men between the ages of 1 6 and 2 1 the privi- 
lege of spending their spare time in productive enterprise 
without interrupting their studies at school, while their older 
brothers are battling in the trenches and on the seas, must 
greatly increase the means of providing for the forces at 
the front and the maintenance of those whose services are 
needed here. It is a high privilege, no less than a patriotic 
duty, to help support the nation by devoted and intelligent 
work in this great crisis. 

Theodore Roosevelt, in writing of the good work 
which the Reserve is doing, says, in part: 

I am glad that you intend to encourage the training of 
the boys to prepare for some essential industry where they 



SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 325 

can take the place of a man called to the front. One of the 
great benefits you confer is that of making the boy realize 
that he is part of Uncle Sam's team ; that he is doing his 
share in this great war ; that he holds his services in trust 
for the nation ; and that though it is proper to consider the 
question of material gain and the question of his own desires, 
yet that what he must most strongly consider at this time 
is where his services will do most good to our people as 
a whole. 

The teachers of America, as weir as the boys, are 
making themselves a part of Uncle Sam's team; 
and they too hold their services in trust for the 
nation. The Junior Red Cross movement in the 
schools has swept the country. The school children 
have advertised and sold bonds of the second Liberty 
Ldan.-^ The teachers of cooking are serving as local 
representatives for the food administrator at Wash- 
ington. Agricultural teachers have pledged them- 
selves as community workers for the summer of 
1918. Manual-training teachers are developing plans 
for substituting garden projects in the spring for 
the manual-training models of the schoolroom. 
Technical colleges and institutes are filled with 
students in uniform. Industrial and trade schools 
on the seacoast are planning to discard their house 

^ In New York City 63,900 applications for bonds, having a total value 
of $7,881,100, were obtained directly by principals, teachers, and pupils, 
and forwarded by the principals to the local Bond committee or the banks. 



326 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

carpentry for shipbuilding courses. County super- 
intendents of schools are studying government bul- 
letins for the last word in preserving and drying 
farm products on a large scale, in order that they 
may give directions to the schools. Teachers in 
academic schools have enlisted for service on relief, 
loan, garden, thrift, and conservation committees. 
Men who were leaders and supervisors of farm- 
cadet camps in 191 7 are planning for similar work 
in the future on a larger and improved basis. Pro- 
grams for teachers' institutes and state associations 
of teachers now include the topics : " What can our 
schools do in war time ? " and " Our schools after 
the war." 

These efforts of the teachers and the pupils re- 
spond to our President's appeal that each of us 
must do his share in making the world safe for 
democracy. 

At present, to be sure, we center our thoughts 
on how to make the world safe for democracy. But 
what of the future? What of the contribution of 
the schools after the war? Should not the schools 
then center their aims and methods on making 
democracy safe for the worldl If the people them- 
selves are to be masters, must they not be provided 
with an education making for mastership? Is it 
not well for us to examine our present schools to 



SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 327 

determine whether they are making a democracy 
which will be safe for the world ? Have we a system 
of education which actually gives an opportunity for 
every child to make the most of himself? Have we 
a liberalized course of study which actually stimu- 
lates and develops intellectual and aesthetic interests 
in music, art, literature, science, travel, and history ? 
Have we evolved a socialized education developing 
moral habits, civic incentives, possession and use of 
ethical ideals and standards for a successful group 
life ? Has our formative process been able to bring 
about refinements of social behavior beyond the 
point required for group participation? Have we 
arrived at the point where we can say that our 
people have even the common culture which it is 
expected all members of a democracy shall possess, 
to say nothing about the development of individual 
culture, which is a possession of the interested in- 
dividual and his congenial fellows? How far have 
we gone in recognizing that " by-education " which 
comes through a child's self-direction of his natural 
or spontaneous learning instincts and impulses? 

How much have we accomplished in giving edu- 
cational and vocational guidance to children be- 
tween the ages of 12 and 16? What has been 
done in the way of fulfilling the national obligation 
to teach the strangers within our gates our language 



328 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

and the principles and forms of our civic life ? What 
has been our program for subnormals in order that 
they may be prepared for independent living in 
the competitive social order? Have we established 
clear-cut distinctions between subnormal and crippled 
cases that must remain custodial and those that can 
be prepared for independent existence? What are 
we doing in the way of education for delinquents? 
To what extent have we utilized the discovery that 
these antisocial manifestations of youth are results 
of heredity, or of inferior homes, or of a lack of 
playgrounds, or of poor schools ? 

Have the schools missed a great opportunity for 
giving moral, civic, and physical training to youth 
by failing to absorb the Boy Scout and Camp Fire 
Girl movements and thus failing to grasp the full 
educational significance of the methods adopted by 
those who so well understand adolescent youth? 
Are the disciplinary methods of the teachers and 
the general internal management of the schools such 
as will develop among pupils a democracy which is 
safe even in the schoolroom ? What have we done 
in determining what is desirable and feasible for 
extending general education to average adults who 
have early entered upon specialized occupations? 

How far have we gone in our program of voca- 
tional education to recognize and to provide for 



SUMMARIZED PROGRAM OF ACTION 329 

the influence of automatic machinery upon the 
physical, mental, and vocational welfare of workers? 
Have we so thoroughly grasped the idea of an edu- 
cational democracy that no child in our schools is 
disadvantaged by the section of the state or of the 
country in which he happens to be born ? 

Have we in our vocational training set up any 
program for the industrial training of women which 
recognizes that the modern problem of women's 
work concerns the following of some productive 
vocation away from home ? Have we even begun 
to realize that every person should have definite 
vocational training with such distinctive purpose 
back of it that it will produce the skill, knowl- 
edge, ideals, and general experience that function 
in distinct callings? 

Have we even thought of a program of education 
for leisure which will develop enduring tastes and 
interests established toward the enrichment of the 
individual and indirectly of social life ? Do we fully 
understand that to make democracy safe for the 
world all people should have some leisure or time 
apart from vocational, civic, and physical necessities 
of life, that such leisure should be filled with socia- 
bility, amusement, recreation, and satisfaction of the 
aesthetic and physical desires, and that the public 
schools must in some measure provide for these? 



330 OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 

Will a democracy proclaiming equality of oppor- 
tunity as its ideal require an education which 
unites from the beginning of the child's school 
life, and for all pupils of the school, learning and 
social application, ideas and practice, work and 
recognition of the meaning of what is done ? Or 
can a democracy be developed by dividing the 
public-school system into parts, one of which pur- 
sues traditional methods with incidental improve- 
ments, and another in which children " learn 
through their hands" and are given only the 
" essential features " of the traditional bookwork ? 

All that the schools are now doing in war time, 
and much more which they are not yet doing, to 
make the world safe for democracy, may be effec- 
tively used after war time to make democracy safe 
for the world. 



INDEX 



Agricultural education, establish- 
ment of, in city schools, 156, 314; 
home-project work, 321 ; relation 
of, to farm-cadet service, 322 

Agricultural labor, resolutions of 
New York State Board of Regents 
in regard to, 95 ; shortage of, 136 ; 
farm-garden permits for, 1 59 ; re- 
lease of schoolboys for, 161-163; 
justification for employment of 
boys for, 164; German women 
and children in, 236, 242, 243 ; 
English children in farm work, 
236-240; organizing boys for, 246- 
256; example of distribution of, 
255-256; social significance of 
boys in, 270-271 ; age distinctions 
of boys, 274 ; types of farm em- 
ployers, 280-282 

Attendance laws, abrogating of, in 
England, 135 ; types of action pos- 
sible in regard to, 138-139; action 
of various states in regard to, 140- 
143; lessons to be learned from 
England, 144-146; modification 
of, 155; changes in New York 
State, 157-159; enlistment for 
farm service in New York State 
and relation to, 1 60-161; relaxing, 
for agricultural work, 237-239; 
constructive policy in amending, 

309 
Aviation schools, 98 



Blind, the, reeducating, 21 1-2 13, 215 
Boy Scouts, 87, 130, 140, 172, 306, 
309. 328 

Camp Fire Girls, 328 

Canada, convalescent homes for dis- 
abled soldiers in, 215; work of 
Military Hospitals Commission in, 
228-231; boys for farm work in, 
247 

Census, agricultural, by schools of 
New York State, 24, 277 ; school 
principal may direct, 312 

Claxton, P. P., 92, 146-150 

Colleges, continuance of, during war 
time, 80-83, 92 ; spirit of mobiliza- 
tion of, 83-86 ; war-emergency 
courses in, 86-90, 96-103 ; main- 
tenance of academic status of, 91, 
93-94 ; field of service for depart- 
ments of psychology in, 101-103; 
contribution of geological depart- 
ments of, 105 ; effect of war on 
curricula of, 1 1 1 ; demand for 
graduates of, 147-148 

Commercial schools, indefiniteness 
of aim in, 316-317 ; short-unit and 
part-time courses in, 317 

Community canning clubs. See Con- 
servation of food 

Conservation of food, need of, 25- 
28 ; saving of waste in New York 
City, 29-31 ; Columbia lectures 



33 > 



332 



OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 



on, 87-88; canning clubs, 125- 
127, 320 ; drying and evaporating, 
126-127, 320; county superintend- 
ents' duties, 326 

Continuation schools, enacting of 
laws for, 155 

Council for National Defense, 94, 96, 

Cripples, reeducating the, 211-233 

Democracy, teaching of, 149-150; 
making safe for the world, 326; 
leisure necessary for, 329 

Disabled soldiers, reeducating the, 
211-233 

Domestic arts, new spirit of teach- 
ing, 118; criticism of existing 
teaching of, 192; improvements in 
teaching, 193-194; ThriftClub,32i 

Domestic science, new spirit of 
teaching, 119; teaching adults, 
122, 319; traveling kitchens, 124; 
demonstration train, 1 24 ; war 
recipes, 319; home cadets, 321 

Education, effect of war on, 1 13-1 14; 
equal opportunity for, 327 ; social- 
ized, 327 ; vocational guidance in, 
327 ; for subnormals and cripples, 
328. See also Colleges, Commer- 
cial Schools, Schools, etc. 

Employment of children, care exer- 
cised in, 146 ; out of school hours, 
149 ; divergent points of view in 
regard to, 150-151 ; recognizing 
work impulses in, 151-152; occu- 
pational study of a group of boys, 
186-190 ; " blind-alley occupa- 
tions," 190-191 ; waste of boy 
power, 191 



England's schools, use of buildings 
in war, 18-20 ; as distributing 
agencies for information, 23-24 ; 
compiling of National Register by, 
24 ; open days for parents, 28 ; 
traveling kitchens in, 29, 124; 
thrift teaching in, 31-32 ; training 
semiskilled workers in, 59-60, 66, 
75-76; productive work of tech- 
nical schools, 60-61 ; courses in 
cantonments, 101-102 ; garden 
work as substitute for manual train- 
ing in, 121-122; short courses in 
cookery in, 123; training cooks 
for army, 128; furnishing meals 
to children in, 129; furnishing 
soldiers' kits and hospital equip- 
ment, 132-134; abrogating attend- 
ance laws, 135, 137-138; restrict- 
ing labor of school children, 144- 
146; children for farm work, 
236-240 ; plans for supervision 
of schoolboy farm labor, 240- 
242 ; reorganization of, 304 

Evening schools, trade-extension 
work in, 72 ; training of foremen 
in, 316 

Farm cadets, organization of, in 
New York State, 172; reason 
for organizing, 234-245 ; plan for 
use of, 246, 272-274 ; rearrange- 
ment of school program for, 247- 
248, 313-314 ; wages of, 249, 250, 
253, 261, 262, 265, 267, 278 ; agree- 
ments and contracts, 251-252, 
279-280, 282-287; New York 
State plan, 253-254; physical 
examination, 264, 274-275; en- 
listment blanks, 276 



INDEX 



333 



Farm-labor camps, explanation of, 
245; Massachusetts plan, 248-253; 
agreements and contracts, 251- 
252,265; illustration of different 
types of, 256-261 ; food cost and 
preparation, 258, 295-297; menus, 
259 ; recreation, 260, 297 ; wages, 
261, 262, 265, 267-269; labor 
distribution, 261-262, 266-268 
personal equipment, 262, 292 
camp equipment, 262, 264, 268 
illustration of training type, 263- 
266; agricultural instruction in, 
267, 297-299 ; flying-squadron 
type, 267-268, 302-303; leader- 
ship, 273, 287-292 ; sanitation, 
295 ; definitions of various types, 

298-303 

Federal Board of Vocational Edu- 
cation, 54-55. 314-315 

France, reeducation of disabled 
soldiers in, 214-225 

French schools, use of buildings in 
war, 20-21 ; war financing helped 
by teachers of, 39-40; teaching 
the meaning of the war in, 41, 
44-46 ; changing aspects of, due 
to war, 41, 51-52; sewing for 
soldiers in, 133; part-time, 155; 
normal schools' contribution to 
war service, 199 ; Red Cross 
work, 208 

German schools, efficiency spirit of, 
17, 104; contribution to agricul- 
tural labor, 242-243 ; conservation 
of natural resources in, 243-244 ; 
industrial-efficiency idea in, 305 

History, teaching of, 46-47 



Industrial and trade schools, contri- 
bution of, to manufacturing needs, 
60 ; war-emergency courses in, 
63, 314-315; question of produc- 
tion in, 66-67 > readjustment in 
war time, 71; open in summer, 
72-73; part-time classes in, 74- 
76 ; teaching of hygiene in, 77 ; 
producing farm-camp equipment, 
252 ; inventories of equipment, 
315; state study of possible war 
uses of, 315 

Junior Red Cross, 207, 209-210 

Labor, war demands for, 58 ; indus- 
trial schools meeting shortage of, 
61, 68-69; one method of train- 
ing, 61-64; educative value of, 

152-153 
Liberty Loan bonds, and the schools, 

37-39.311.325 
Library, service of, in war time, 104- 
105 

Manual training, garden work in 
place of, 130-131 ; war-service 
work in, 131-132, 317-319; mak- 
ing Red Cross splints, 206, 317; 
abandoning models, 318; in con- 
nection with junior high schools, 

319 
Military equivalents, recognition of, 
in New York State, 171, 305; 
experience in England, France, 
and Germany, 173; necessity of 
conscious service, 174, 177-180; 
types of occupations having, 
175-176; "Moral Equivalent of 
War," 176; an example of, in 



334 



OUR SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME 



agriculture, 181-185; an example 
of, in industry, 186-189; farm 
labor as a military equivalent, 2 54 

Military training, exemptions from, 
165, 167 ; compulsory in New 
York State, 166; in high schools, 
167-170; including employed 
boys, 168, 170-171; vocational 
training in relation to, 173 ; adap- 
tability of, 309 

" Moral Equivalent of War," 176 

National Board for Historical Serv- 
ice, 46 
National Council of Defense, 94, 

96,315 
National Security League, 49-50, 

140 
National Society for the Promotion 

of Industrial Education, 64 
Naval schools, description of, 77-79 

Off- time classes, importance of, 72 

Part-time education, opportunity for, 
74-75 ; war-emergency courses in, 
154-155; enacting laws for, 155; 
farm work and, 240 ; as an econ- 
omy measure, 308-309 

Patriotism, teaching meaning of the 
war, 42 ; necessity for teaching, 
42-44, 48-49 ; topics in relation 
to, 50-51 

Physical training, compulsory in 
New York State, 166; recom- 
mendations of New Jersey Com- 
mission in regard to, 167-170; 
importance of, from military 
standpoint, 168-169; advantages 
of, over military training, 309 



Posters, war, 129-130 

Practical arts, definition of, 116; proj- 
ect plan of teaching, 117-118; in- 
fluence of war-service work on, 1 1 7 

Principal, war duties of, 33-34. 
310-314 

Red Cross, work for, in schools, 
194, 196-198, 311; a state plan 
of school service to, 200-201 ; 
use of knitting machines, 202 ; 
work for, in Troy, N.Y., 202- 
205 ; making splints, 206 ; Home 
Service division of, 207-208 ; 
Junior Red Cross, 207, 209-210; 
what can be done in schools for, 
207 ; reporting home conditions 
to, 308 

Reeducation, the problem of the 
physically handicapped, 21 1-2 13 ; 
relation to federal insurance, 213 ; 
a government problem, 214; in- 
struction for the blind in France, 
215; L'Ecole Joffre, 216-219; 
instruction in vocational sub- 
jects in France 218-221, 224- 
225 ; percentage capable of, in 
France, 222; the problem in the 
United States,- 225-228; indus- 
trial accidents and, 232 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 11, 324-325 

Rural schools, agricultural labor 
under direction of, 1 53-1 54 ; camp 
in connection with, 302 

School boards, in relation to war 
service, 306-307 ; provisions of, 
for drafted teachers, 307-308 ; 
organization of vocational courses 
by, 310; planning for agriculture 



INDEX 



335 



by, 310; work of, for avoiding 
juvenile delinquency, 310 
School principals, 33-34, 310-314 
Schools, as distributing centers for 
pamphlets, etc., 22, 311 ; furnish- 
ing lunches to children in, 128- 
1 29, 308 ; opportunity for poster 
work in, 129-130; maintaining 
efficiency of, 146; keeping chil- 
dren in, 147, 308; postponement 
of construction work for, 149; 
agricultural activities in rural, 153 ; 
lengthening terms and hours of, 
308. See also Commercial schools, 
French schools, etc. 
Smith-Hughes Bill, 54, 57 

Teachers, work of, in promoting 
French government loans, 39-40 ; 
opportunities of, to teach history, 
46-49 ; New York State direc- 
tions to, 119-121; service of, on 
committees, 326; war-service pro- 
grams of, 326 

Technical institutes : war-service 
courses in Wentworth Institute, 
Boston, 106-107 ; Pratt Institute, 
Brooklyn, 107-108 ; Dunwoody 
Institute, Minneapolis, 108-111 



Thrift, necessity for, 31-33; prac- 
tice of, in England, 31-32, 36-37 ; 
teaching of, 35; campaign for, 
311; Thrift Club, 321 

Trade schools. See Industrial and 
trade schools 

Traveling kitchens, 29, 124 

Unit courses, organization of, 73- 
74 ; utility of, 306 

United States Boys' Working Re- 
serve, 163-164, 322-324 

Vocational education, definition of, 
■ 53 ; federal grants for, 54-55 ; 
federal requirements of, 56 ; ad- 
justment of, to industrial needs, 
59 ; standardization of products, 
195; "safety-first" instruction in, 
212 ; opportunity for teachers in, 
233 ; influence of automatic ma- 
chinery on, 329 ; for distinct call- 
ings, 329 

War Savings certificates, in Eng- 
land, 36-37 ; in the United States, 

3" 
Wilson, Woodrow, i, 54, 72-73, 81- 
82, 209, 324 



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